Lucia was some time joining them, and when she did so the reason for the delay became obvious as she had completely changed her outfit.
‘Lucia, how gorgeous!’ Olga exclaimed. ‘Aren’t you wonderful?’
‘Now you sound like Quaint Irene again,’ said Georgie mischievously.
‘May I prepare you a cocktail, madam?’ Francesco enquired.
‘Thank you, no,’ Lucia replied, rather coolly Georgie thought, and then, ‘if you two have finished your drinks, perhaps we might go down to lunch?’
Giuseppe fussed around them on the terrace, installing them at a shady table.
‘I find, Georgie,’ Lucia said rather sharply after Giuseppe had given them their menus, ‘that we appear to be in something of a backwater.’
‘Surely not?’ Georgie queried in surprise, looking around the terrace. ‘I believe this is by far the best restaurant in Bellagio. The menu looks superb. But if you would like to go somewhere else ...’
‘Don’t be obtuse, Georgie,’ Lucia said sharply. ‘I refer not to the restaurant, but to Bellagio itself. My guidebook is strangely silent, mentioning only this hotel as a point of interest. I presumed it to be an oversight, but on consulting my maid, I find that apart from one small church there is nothing here at all – no cathedral, no galleries, nothing.’
‘Well, there is a rather fine cathedral in Como,’ Georgie said. ‘You saw the outside of it as we came from the station to catch the steamer. That would make a fine outing for you one day.’
‘Oh, Lucia,’ Olga cut in breezily, ‘Bellagio offers a very different sort of holiday. We are surrounded by wonderful villas with beautiful gardens all up and down the lake. Why, if you want to, you can take a different steamer every day and travel around to your heart’s content.’
‘I cannot help noticing,’ Lucia remarked tightly, ‘that you both refer to what I might do, but that the first person plural is strangely absent. May I ask what you two are planning to do, while I am undertaking these daily excursions?’
‘Well,’ said Georgie uneasily, ‘I thought I might try some watercolours – maybe from the balcony of our room. There’s a wonderful view from there.’
‘Indeed,’ Lucia said in an even tighter voice. ‘I was hoping, Georgie, that we might spend at least some of our holiday together.’
‘Oh, but you will, of course,’ Olga assured her, kicking Georgie under the table. ‘Why, we should all go up to Gravedona one day, or perhaps across to Cernobbio.’
‘Hm,’ said Lucia, but barely mollified. ‘I can’t help thinking, Georgie, that this is another attempt to get rid of me. Perhaps you have some other stray beggar to palm off on me as a guide?’
‘Oh, Lucia, really,’ replied Georgie, in a scandalised tone. ‘I’ll have you know it was Susanna, actually, and we all had a jolly good laugh about it, when we told her that you’d thought she was a street urchin. Really, I was only thinking of you. I thought you might enjoy her company as she showed you around.’
‘She’s a countess, of course,’ he went on airily, ‘so it’s a good job she has a good sense of humour. Why, she might have been offended and never spoken to us again.’
‘Only an Italian countess, Georgie,’ said Lucia, provoked beyond endurance. ‘Why, they’re two a penny you know, positively everyone out here is some sort of countess. You meet them all the time. It’s probably no different from being on the parish council of your local church back in England.’
She suddenly noticed that Olga, who was facing the hotel, was staring back over Lucia’s shoulder with a very surprised expression on her face.
‘Why surely it can’t be ...? Yes, it is. Lucia, Georgie, surely those are your friends from Tilling, aren’t they?’
Lucia turned to find Mr and Mrs Wyse bearing down upon them, Mr Wyse in a natty linen suit and what looked like a bee-keeper’s hat without a veil.
‘Dear lady,’ he said, whipping it off and bowing, ‘forgive the intrusion. Miss Bracely, Mr Pillson.’
Further bows.
‘But what on earth are you doing here?’ asked Lucia. ‘I thought you were going to Capri as usual.’
‘Cholera, dear,’ Susan Wyse said, rolling her eyes alarmingly. ‘Fortunately we heard about it as we approached Naples, turned straight round and headed north again. They’re talking of quarantine and fever hospitals. Too ghastly!’
‘Then of course we had to decide what to do, where to go,’ Mr Wyse explained, ‘and straight away we naturally thought of joining our good friends in Bellagio. So, we phoned ahead for rooms and here we are.’
He beamed at the assembled company.
‘Wonderful,’ Lucia pronounced determinedly. ‘Why, how wonderful to have some of the grand old Tilling crowd around one. Giuseppe, could you please bring two more chairs?’
‘Oh, three please,’ Susan said. ‘We are travelling with Algernon’s sister Amelia.’
‘Oh, another Italian countess,’ Georgie commented. ‘Well, tum-ti-tum. So common at this time of year, I find.’
Lucia forbore to respond.
Amelia, Contessa di Faraglione, emerged through the French windows and greeted them without any unnecessary show of emotion such as might disturb her eye-glass.
‘But Amelia, dear,’ Lucia enquired as Georgie and Mr Wyse hastened around the table seating the ladies, ‘Susan said something about quarantine. How did you escape?’
‘In a fishing boat,’ Amelia boomed. ‘Had to bribe the coastguard, of course. So silly. Why, there hasn’t been cholera in our family for years.’
‘But isn’t it infectious, rather than hereditary?’ asked Georgie.
‘Nonsense,’ Amelia asserted, ‘and anyway my cheroots would keep any infection at bay. Cheroot smoke is very sterile, you know.’
A sudden suspicion struck Lucia.
‘That isn’t your Bugatti outside, by any chance?’ she asked casually.
‘No, dear,’ said Susan. ‘Why, we have the Royce as usual.’
‘The owners are British but something of a mystery, I understand,’ Mr Wyse interjected. ‘We have yet to meet them as we arrived late last night and went straight out for a walk this morning.’
‘It’s, well, big, isn’t it?’ Georgie said, turning slightly to look at it in the driveway.
‘Too big, I fancy,’ Susan said. ‘Too big for Italian roads, anyway. Didn’t you notice how many dents and scratches it has? My chauffeur is of the opinion that it’s had quite a few contretemps on the way here.’
‘Bounced off a few things, is what he said,’ Mr Wyse contributed, while breaking a bread roll in a particularly exquisite manner.
‘Then tutted and shook his head, poor man,’ Susan continued. ‘I think seeing such a fine car in such a sorry state really upset him.’
‘I dare say we’ll meet them this evening,’ Olga ventured.
‘Indeed,’ Lucia said grimly. ‘I am looking forward to it.’
The Wyses both looked rather surprised at the vehemence of Lucia’s utterance, and both said ‘No!’ in a highly gratifying manner when the full extent of the unknown woman’s perfidy in attempting to purloin Lucia’s accommodation was explained. There was then a rather awkward pause, which Mr Wyse characteristically sought to alleviate.
‘How typical of you, Mrs Pillson, to have chosen such an exquisite location for your holidays. Such taste. Such refinement.’
‘Well, one had read so much about it,’ Lucia replied, ‘and I decided at once that this was just the place for us. So glad I managed to persuade Georgie. The very surroundings inspire an almost tangible feeling in one of enduring beauty, don’t they? Shelley, you know, and Manzoni.’
She drew a deep, quavering breath as though inhaling copious amounts of enduring beauty and testing its perfume.
‘Manzoni?’ queried Mr Wyse in some puzzlement.
‘I promessi sposi,’ Lucia intoned gravely, making it sound like a religious incantation.
‘But that’s set mostly in Milan, surely?’ he replied, before he had a chance to consider that questioning the châtelaine of Mallards’ literary knowledge was against every rule of polite Tilling society.
‘Lake Como,’ Lucia averred. ‘I remember it distinctly.’
Amelia had no knowledge of the rules of Tilling society, and would probably have had little time for them even had she done so.
‘Yes, dear, but only the first chapter,’ she said dismissively.
After lunch Lucia interrogated the concierge at some length as to local places of interest and shortly afterwards departed in a motor launch to visit a renowned private garden to which the hotel had been able to obtain access for her. Georgie thought of pleading fatigue, but a stern glance from Olga, coupled with Lucia gazing distractedly into the distance, was sufficient for him to express a wish to accompany her with an almost credible level of enthusiasm.
The Wyses departed in search of a shady spot, Mr Wyse to attempt a two-day-old Times crossword, Susan to read the latest Rudolph da Vinci. Rather thrillingly, the author had visited Tilling as the summer tenant of Grebe, but rather less thrillingly had turned out to be a perfectly ordinary middle-aged woman called Susan Leg, who during the course of her stay successfully resisted Lucia’s sustained efforts to persuade her to write a book set in Tilling and featuring its lady mayor as the central character.
Olga departed by motor launch in a different direction, in search of some friends who were staying in Cernobbio.
After some gentle hours had passed, during which the Wyses had slumbered decorously, Lucia had passed slowly around the garden of a lakeside villa gravely writing the Latin names of many plants in her notebook, Georgie had waved away many a marauding wasp, and Olga had shared cocktails with a marchese, various Italian film actors and at least two millionaires, the various guests of the hotel began to filter home, rather like social moths being drawn to the candle of the magnificent sunset which was displaying its full glory above the mountains to the west.
Georgie really was rather fatigued now, but at Francesco’s invitation lay down on the bed while his new-found faithful retainer massaged peppermint oil into his temples, which revived him tremendously. Francesco then handed him into his evening dress, even tying his bow tie for him.
‘I hope you approve of your cufflinks, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘I polished them while you were out.’
‘Oh,’ replied Georgie, mightily impressed, ‘yes, thank you, Francesco.’
‘May I get you a glass of sherry, sir, while you wait for Mrs Pillson?’
‘No,’ said Georgie, feeling truly reckless on his first evening by Lake Como, ‘I will have a Negroni.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Francesco went to busy himself at the cocktail cabinet while Georgie sat down and admired his cufflinks. Francesco brought the Negroni which Georgie sampled, and pronounced quite excellent. Then he practised crossing his legs for a while in the mirror, and found that if he concentrated really hard he could nonchalantly shoot his cuff at the same time as he straightened the crease on his knee.
Finally, after Georgie had finished his drink and was considering another, Lucia’s door opened, and she appeared, a vision in silver-grey silk.
‘I say!’ he said. ‘Don’t you look wonderful? Is that new?’
‘Thank you, Georgie,’ she replied graciously, ‘and yes, it is.’
‘Do you notice anything different about me?’ he asked, and shot one of his cuffs to convey the broadest of hints.
Lucia glanced quickly to check that his toupée was on straight and said distractedly, ‘No, dear, shall we go down?’
Crestfallen, Georgie said, ‘Oh, yes’ in a very sad little voice, and offered her his arm.
‘Why, Georgie,’ Olga cried as he came downstairs with Lucia, ‘I do declare! You’ve had your cufflinks polished.’
‘Oh,’ he said, mightily pleased, ‘you noticed.’
‘No, actually Francesco told me,’ she whispered as she leant forward to give him a little peck on the cheek.
Then she took Lucia’s arm and said, ‘Come on, Lucia, I need a drink,’ as the three of them moved into the charming little lounge area, where a piano trio was playing.
‘Why there are the Wyses and Amelia,’ Lucia said. ‘Good evening everyone, good evening ...’
Her voice faded away as she noticed that the Wyses and Amelia were all sitting there wearing very strange expressions. Amelia jerked her head so violently in the general direction of the terrace that her eye-glass fell out and dangled, neglected, on its cord.
‘Lucia dear, how lovely to see you,’ Elizabeth Mapp-Flint broadcast to the room at large as she swept into the room from the terrace. ‘And Mr Georgie and Miss Bracely. Goodness, so many lovely people. The Wyses of course we have just met on your way through to the terrace to take the air. Joy unconfined, dear. How wonderful all to be together like this. Why, it’ll be just like Tilling, won’t it? Except that Benjy-boy and I will be in situ as it were, and not have to travel all the way in from draughty old Grebe. Joy unconfined! Joy, joy, joy!’
She clasped her hands before her and beamed widely and fixedly as if to make explicit just how unconfined her joy really was. In doing so she bared her teeth, which Georgie and Mr Wyse, both being of a somewhat nervous disposition, found distinctly alarming. Susan’s face showed embarrassment, Olga’s deep shock, and Amelia’s an involuntary but sincerely felt grimace of distaste.
Lucia was in danger of being rendered speechless. Unfortunately Mapp made her speech of welcome just that odd second too long, allowing Lucia to recover, parry and riposte.
‘Elizabeth!’ she marvelled, ‘and Major Benjy! Good evening, Major.’
‘Good evening, dear lady,’ he responded warmly. ‘And I see we are to be blessed with the company of Miss Bracely. What joy indeed!’
‘Why, Elizabeth, what a surprise,’ trilled Lucia in wonderment. ‘But of course, I should have guessed it was you, when I heard about that business with the rooms.’
A frisson of uneasiness rippled through the company.
‘Sorry, dear?’ Elizabeth’s smile became if anything a trifle more fixed, leaving a lasting impression of gums and neck-wrinkles.
‘My suite, dear,’ Lucia chided her gently. ‘Really, how very naughty of you to try to make them give you my accommodation. But then, how very like you. Fortune favours the bold, don’t you always say?’
Mr Wyse, well practised in being an onlooker in such situations, blanched inwardly at the force of Lucia’s assault. There was not so much an edge to the conversation as a stiletto blade.
‘Sorry, dear, not with you at all,’ Elizabeth said briskly, as if in a hurry to get off to the kitchen to bottle some of her celebrated marrow jam, and unprepared to tarry for social trifles. ‘Some trouble with your rooms was there? Sorted out now, I trust.’
‘Perfectly, grazie tanto.’ Lucia raised a hand as if acknowledging the forehead-knuckling of a gathering of yokels. ‘Everything was, as you say, sorted out. Before we arrived, in fact.’
She paused and gazed levelly at Elizabeth.
‘As soon as the hotel realised that the person claiming my rooms had in fact no right to them at all.’
‘You speak in riddles, dear one,’ Elizabeth protested gaily. ‘Why, how very complicated it all sounds.’
‘I refer to the Royal Suite, Elizabeth,’ Lucia informed her remorselessly. ‘My suite, which you tried to persuade the hotel to give to you.’
‘Why yes, I do remember some confusion or other now that you come to mention it,’ Elizabeth conceded graciously. ‘So silly! Because the maharajah had booked our rooms, they naturally thought the royal suite was for us, I suppose. Luckily we managed to put them right.’
‘The maharajah?’ Lucia queried, looking around the room theatrically. ‘But where is he, Elizabeth. Is he not coming down to dinner?’
‘No, dear,’ Elizabeth said equably. ‘Not quite.’
‘No?’ exclaimed Lucia in disbelief. ‘Dear me, what a shame, Elizabeth. Why, I thought you had become firm friends. I thought you might be travelling together.’
‘Not quite,’ Elizabeth repeated, savouring the moment. ‘With his son.’
‘His son?’ Lucia echoed blankly. Elizabeth’s lunge and attack had been perfectly timed and elegantly executed.
‘Yes, dear, Ramesh. Lovely boy. Lovely manners. Eton and all that, you know.’
At this moment the object of her description came hesitantly into the room, dressed in immaculate evening dress, and stood politely beside her.
‘Why there you are, your highness,’ she warbled. ‘You must allow me to introduce you to my friends.’
‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth,’ chided Lucia gently. ‘One does not introduce royalty to one’s friends, one introduces one’s friends to royalty. Perhaps you would permit me, your highness?’
So saying, with an elegant curtsey, she took charge of the situation, introducing everyone in turn, her young royal charge protesting repeatedly that everyone must please call him ‘Ramesh’.
As he begged everybody to be seated she drew him expertly to the sofa beside her. So busy had she been with her introductions that she could not possibly have been expected to notice that this left everyone grouped around facing inwards in a loose rectangle with her at its centre. Likewise it was surely a coincidence that the rectangle contained two seats too few, thus accidentally excluding the Mapp-Flints altogether, who were left hovering uncertainly on the periphery between two equally distant tables.
Naturally this caused Mr Wyse acute distress and he rose at once to remedy the situation, and there was much fussing around and calling of waiters to move chairs and tables. While all this was going on Elizabeth protested that nobody should trouble themselves on her account, dear Mr Wyse must be seated, dear Susan was in danger of knocking her drink over, and perhaps it was time for dinner anyway, all in an increasingly shrill tone of voice.
‘Of course, dear,’ Lucia’s voice rose above the genteel chaos, ‘if you’re on your way in to dinner then of course we mustn’t detain you. So nice to meet you, Ramesh, perhaps we can talk tomorrow.’
Suddenly everyone was seated again exactly where they had been a few seconds previously and the Mapp-Flint party found itself borne away into the restaurant by a giant bubble of expectation, with Lucia smiling sweetly and waving a wan little hand at the sorrow of their having to part so soon after they had encountered each other.
‘Well!’ gasped Georgie a few seconds later. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Typical Elizabeth, dear,’ Lucia enlightened him briskly. ‘Dog in a manger. Cannot bear to see anyone have fun, and so drags poor Major Benjy here to try to spoil it for us all.’
‘Not spoil it, surely?’ Susan tried gamely.
‘Well, what would you call it?’ Georgie retorted, rather shortly. So shortly, in fact, that he apologised immediately.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Wyse, but really! We go to all the trouble of choosing this wonderful place only to find that Elizabeth Mapp, of all people, will be sharing it with us.’
‘A coincidence, perhaps?’ Mr Wyse ventured, making a final effort to pour oil on troubled waters. ‘I cannot believe that Mrs Mapp-Flint would deliberately set out to spoil anyone’s holiday.’
Even as he said it, he realised how lame it sounded. Why, it was he himself who had discovered how only a few years previously Miss Mapp had put the Major literally in fear for his life when she suspected that another woman might be stealing his affections, notwithstanding their ‘understanding’ – an understanding, it must be admitted, that was distinctly one-sided.
Amelia, who was of a much less charitable disposition, snorted in derision.
‘Don’t be a fool, Algy, of course she would. Remember that business with the cakes.’
Everyone knew that shortly before Lucia’s arrival in Tilling (strange that although of course Georgie had accompanied her everyone still thought of it instinctively as ‘Lucia’s arrival’) Elizabeth Mapp had first surreptitiously turned up the heat in Diva Plaistow’s stove in an effort to ruin her entry in a cake competition and, when this first tactic had proved unsuccessful, had then shamelessly sneaked into the church hall to switch the name flags around, thus passing off Diva’s efforts as her own and vice versa. Again it had been Mr Wyse who had discovered her deception. Then as now, it had been Mr Wyse who struggled in vain to find some innocent explanation for it.
‘I would believe anything of that woman,’ Amelia declared firmly, and glared at her brother, daring him to contradict her. In fact he had dared to contradict her only once, when they were children together, and after that very distressing resulting incident involving a pair of fire tongs had wisely never sought to do so again.
‘She is a pill and a blister,’ Amelia continued, thus revealing for all to hear that her recent reading matter had included P.G. Wodehouse. ‘In fact,’ she continued, hitting her stride, ‘I would go so far as to say that she is a major blot on the landscape.’
She sat back triumphantly as Mr Wyse protested weakly, ‘Oh, I say.’
‘I am forced to agree with Amelia,’ Lucia said, in a voice which likewise brooked no disagreement. ‘It is a low trick, and sadly typical of Elizabeth.’
‘Then let us rise above it,’ Olga broke in. ‘Just because she’s trying to spoil our holiday, it doesn’t mean we have to let her, does it? For example, we know they’ve just gone into dinner. They’re likely to be there for an hour and a half or so. We shall simply wait until they’ve finished, sitting here having a chat and a few drinks.’
‘Oh, Olga,’ Georgie said admiringly. ‘You are wonderful. You always know exactly what to do to make things right again.’
Lucia made one of her characteristic little strangulated noises which, as always, was perfectly modulated, this time conveying similar approbation but with an accompanying modicum of disappointment that nobody had thought to wait for her to make exactly the same suggestion.
‘Tomorrow,’ Olga went on decisively, ‘I’ll speak to Giuseppe. He can wait each day until they book for dinner and make sure we don’t overlap. That way the worst that can happen to us is that we have to put up with them here in the lounge for a few minutes either before or after dinner. There – what do you say?’
‘I say a large dry Martini, please,’ Amelia said decisively, ‘and a sandwich to keep me going for the next hour or so.’