Death of a Ghost Read Online Free

beautiful peacock strutting so proudly about the studio, she had approached Mrs Lafcadio and, in that sweet vacant voice of hers, had murmured: ‘Belle darling, you must be Big. When a man is as great as the Master, no one woman can expect to fill his life. Let us share him, dear, and work together in the immortal cause of Art.’ And Belle, plump and smiling, had patted one of the beautiful shoulders and whispered close to one of the lovely ears: ‘Of course, my dear, of course. But let us keep it a secret from Johnnie.’
    The other superstition was that Lafcadio had never allowed her to speak in his presence; or rather, had persuaded her not to by the simple expedient of telling her that her pinnacle of beauty was achieved when her face was in repose.
    For the rest, she was an Englishwoman with no pretension at all to the ‘Donna’ or the ‘Beatrice’, which she pronounced Italian fashion, sounding the final ‘e’. Very few knew her real name; it was a secret she guarded passionately. But if in Lafcadio’s lifetime she had been content to remain beautiful but dumb, on his death she had developed an unexpected force of character inasmuch as she had shown very plainly that she had no intention of giving up the position of reflected glory which she had held so long. No one knew what arguments she had used to prevail upon Belle to permit her to take up her residence in the house, but at any rate she had succeeded now, and occupied two rooms on the second floor, where she continued her hobby of manufacturing ‘art’ jewellery and practising various forms of semi-religious mysticism to which she had lately become addicted.
    At the moment she was dressed in a long Florentine gown of old rose brocade, strongly reminiscent of Burne-Jones but cut with a curtsy to Modernity, so that the true character of the frock was lost and it became an odd nondescript garment covering her thin figure from throat to ankle. To complete her toilet she had draped a long pink and silver scarf across her shoulders and the two ends rippled beneath her with the untidy grace of a nymph on the cover of
Punch.
    Her hair was frankly 1900. Its coarse gold strands had faded and there were wide silver ribbons amongst them, but the dressing was still that of the Gibson Girl, odd in a convention not old enough to be romantic.
    An incongruous note was struck by a black cord running from beneath her hair to a battery on her chest, for her hearing, never good, had declined with the years and she was now practically stone-deaf except when equipped with this affront to her vanity.
    Round her neck was a beaten silver chain of her own making, hanging to her knees and weighted by a baroque enamel cross. She was a figure of faintly uncomfortable pathos, reminding the young man irresistibly of a pressed rose, a little brown about the edges and scarcely even of sentimental value.
    â€˜Mr Campion?’ A surprisingly hard bony hand was thrust into his. ‘You’ve been seeing the picture, of course?’ The voice was soft and intentionally vibrant. ‘I was so thrilled when I saw it again after all these years. I remember lying on the chaise-longue in the studio while the Master painted it.’
    She dropped her eyes on the name and he had the uncomfortable impression that she was about to cross herself.
    â€˜He liked to have me near whilst he was painting, you know. I know now that I always had a blue aura in those days, and that’s what inspired him. I do think there’s such a lot in Colour, don’t you? Of course, he told me it was to be a secret – even from Belle. But Belle never minds. Dear Belle.’
    She smiled at the other woman with a mixture of affection and contempt.
    â€˜Do you know, I was discussing Belle with Doctor Hilda Bayman, the Mystic. She says Belle must be an old soul – meaning, you understand, that she’s been on the earth many times before.’
    Campion