Death of a Ghost Read Online Free Page A

gave way to the embarrassment which Donna Beatrice’s mystic revelations invariably produced upon her more acute acquaintances. Pampered vanity and the cult of the Higher Selfishness he found slightly nauseating.
    Belle laughed. ‘I love to hear that,’ she said. ‘A dear old soul, I always hope. A sort of old Queen Cole. Has Linda come in yet? She went to see Tommy Dacre,’ she continued, turning to Campion. ‘He came back from Florence last night, after three years at mural work. Isn’t it tragic? The students used to paint cathedral ceilings: now they paint cinema roofs.’
    Donna Beatrice’s still beautiful face adopted a petulant expression.
    â€˜I really don’t know anything about Linda,’ she said. ‘It’s Lisa I’m worrying about. That’s why I wanted to see you. The creature simply refuses to wear the Clytemnestra robe tomorrow. I’ve had it let out. She ought to defer a little to the occasion. As it is, she simply looks like an Italian cook. We always look like our minds in the end – Belle, what are you laughing at?’
    Mrs Lafcadio squeezed Mr Campion’s arm. ‘Poor Lisa,’ she said, and chuckled again.
    Two bright spots of colour appeared on Donna Beatrice’s cheek-bones.
    â€˜Really, Belle, I hardly expect you to appreciate the sacredness of the occasion,’ she said, ‘but at least don’t make my task more difficult. We’ve got to serve the Master tomorrow. We’ve got to keep his name green, to keep the torch alight.’
    â€˜And so poor Lisa’s got to put on a tight purple dress and leave her beloved kitchen. It seems a little severe. You be careful Beatrice. Lisa’s descended from the Borgias on her mother’s side. You’ll get arsenic in your minestrone if you tease her.’
    â€˜Belle, how can you? In front of a detective, too.’ The two bright spots in Donna Beatrice’s cheeks deepened. ‘Besides, although Mr Campion knows it, I thought we’d agreed to keep Lisa’s position here a secret. It seems so terrible,’ she went on, ‘that the Master’s favourite model should degenerate into a cook in his household.’
    Belle looked discomforted and an awkward moment was ended by a peal on the front-door bell, and the almost instantaneous appearance of Lisa herself at the kitchen door.
    Lisa Capella, discovered by Lafcadio on the slopes outside Vecchia one morning in 1884, had been brought by him to England where she occupied the position of principal model until her beauty passed, when she took up the household duties for Belle, to whom she was deeply attached. Now, at the age of sixty-five, she looked much older, a withered, rather terrible old woman with a wrinkled brown face, quick dark angry eyes and very white hair scraped back from her forehead. She was dressed completely in black, the dead and clinging folds which enveloped her only relieved by a gold chain and brooch.
    She shot a sullen, vicious glance at Beatrice, sped past her on noiseless, felt-slippered feet over the coloured tiles, and swung the front door open.
    A rush of cool air, a little dank from the canal, sped down the hall to meet them, and instantly a new personality pervaded the whole place as vividly and tangibly as if it had been an odour.
    Max Fustian surged into the house, not crudely or noisily, but irresistibly, and with the same conscious power with which a successful actor-manager makes his appearance in the first act of a new play. They heard his voice, deep, drawling, impossibly affected, from the doorway.
    â€˜Lisa, you look deliriously macabre this evening. When Hecate opens the door of Hell to me she will look like you. Ah, Belle, darling! Are we prepared? And Donna Beatrice? And the sleuth! My salutations, all of you.’
    He came up out of the shadow to lay one very white hand affectionately on Belle’s arm, while the other, outstretched, suggested an