The Chemickal Marriage

corridor, and the servant fell in step.
    ‘You asked to be reminded, sir –’
    ‘There is no hope, Kelling – they must wait!’ Schoepfil turned with an exasperated smile. ‘Is there an hour in the day that might not be doubled and still found too brief?’
    ‘Every last one of them,’ she replied, not liking to be pulled.
    Mr Schoepfil’s eyes twinkled. ‘You affect to be sour.’
    ‘You are a ghoul.’
    ‘The world is ghoulish. I do not see you hiding your head in a rabbit-hole!’ Kelling darted forward to open a door, allowing Schoepfil to sweep through without pause. ‘Figures such as ourselves do not
arise
without purpose.’
    The door closed on Miss Temple’s heel, Kelling outside. Schoepfil approached another table, piled not with papers but, to her dismay, a heap of metal tools.
    ‘But
whose
purpose, Miss Temple?’ Schoepfil sorted the tools with an extended finger. ‘We navigate currents of
influence
as Magellan did the sea, and glean what? The source, if to address it thusly does not impugn the term, of
integrity
. In your own case, what
puppeteer
has hung you in my reach?’
    ‘Since you saw me with the Contessa, I assume you’ve solved that mystery.’
    ‘And whatever shall I do about it?’
    ‘What you can get away with. But you had best make sure that woman’s dead.’
    Schoepfil gave her an indulgent smile and opened the oblong box. He peered at her above his spectacles. ‘I suppose you know what I have?’
    ‘Why should I?’ replied Miss Temple. ‘I am a puppet nobody.’
    ‘O buck up.’
    To her surprise Miss Temple bit back a retort that was palpably obscene. Was that next for her disintegrating character, the manners of a fish-wife? She nipped the inside of one cheek between her teeth. Heedless of her silence, Schoepfil again pecked at the contents of the box. Now his counting grew ever more complex, as if Schoepfil were attempting to solve a larger mathematical question. Miss Temple cast a wary eye at the iron tools.
    ‘Who are
you
to have the free possession of so many rooms in the Queen’s Palace?’
    ‘Queer, isn’t it?’
    ‘Does the Queen even know?’
    Schoepfil laughed and rapped the table with his fist, a gesture Miss Temple already found affected and odious. ‘Why should she?’
    ‘I don’t suppose you slipped in with the tradesmen.’
    ‘I did not. Those who do not belong here are
noticed
.’
    ‘I was not.’
    ‘
Au contraire!
Every bit as much as your dynamic companion.’
    ‘Why would anyone notice me?’
    Schoepfil nodded in agreement, a condescending dismissal. ‘The
true
question was how so disreputable a figure as the Contessa managed an audience? It had to be you, her companion, however unimpressive, who boresome vital news. And
then
you mentioned Roger Bascombe, which changes
everything
.’
    ‘You said I was of no genuine interest.’
    ‘Was I wrong? You have killed, you say, four men – one of whom, unless I am a fool, was Bascombe himself.’ He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her contradiction. When it did not come, Mr Schoepfil barked with satisfaction. ‘To the business! What say you to
these
?’
    Schoepfil spun the oblong box to her view. It was lined with orange felt, with eight indented slots made to hold glass cards. Seven had been filled, but the glass cards were swirled with different colours, only one of them properly blue. The last slot was empty.
    What came to Miss Temple’s mind, for the second time that day, was her former neighbour and rival, Miss Cynthia Hobart, the identification suggested by Schoepfil’s fingers, flitting from square to square like indecisive bees, an exact mirror of Cynthia’s hand above a tray of tea cakes. For years Miss Temple had been daunted by Cynthia in social matters, by the other girl’s ability – no matter what opinion Miss Temple might express – to adopt a contrary and, it was disdainfully implied, superior point of view. Again and again the young Miss Temple had returned from teas or suppers or dances stinging with the hidden weals of Cynthia’s condescension, victories well noted by everyone else in attendance.
    But a day had come – brilliant, precious, a pearl. The matter was trivial: a pot of marmalade from the Hobarts’ cook. The fruit had been coarsely cut and stood out by the spoonful in sweet gleaming chunks. At Miss Temple’s demurral Cynthia had loudly announced a preference for firm, palpable fruit in her marmalade, an opinion shared by no less a personage