Read The Man in the Picture for Free Online Page B

upon it and naturally brought it to my attention. I was considerably shaken, as I say.’
    ‘May I ask why? What the picture has to do with you – or perhaps with your family? Clearly it is of some importance for you to ask me here.’
    ‘It is of more importance than I can say. Nothing else in life matters to me more. Nothing else. ’
    Her gaze held mine as a hand might hold another in a grip of steel. I could not look away and it was only the voice of the silent-footed butler, who now appeared behind us and announced dinner, which broke the dreadful spell.
    The dining room was high-ceilinged and chill and we sat together at one end of the long table, with silver candlesticks before us and the full paraphernalia of china, silver and glassware as for an elaborate dinner. I wondered if the Countess sat in such state when she dined alone. I had offered her my arm across the polished floors into the dining room and it had been like having the claw of a bird resting there. Her back was bent and she had no flesh on her bones. I guessed that she must be well into her nineties. Sitting next to me, she seemed more like a moth than a bird, with the brilliant blue eyes glinting at me out of the pale skin, but I noticed that she was made up with rouge and powder and that her nails were painted. She had a high forehead behind which the hair was puffed out, and a beaky, bony nose, a thin line of mouth. Her cheekbones were high, too, and I thought that, with the blue of her eyes and with flesh on her distinguished bones, she might well have been a considerable beauty in her youth.
    A plate of smoked fish was offered, together with thinly sliced bread and chunks of lemon, and a bowl of salad was set in front of us. I filled my mouth full, partly because I was hungry, but also in order not to have to talk for a few moments. A fine white Burgundy was poured, though, again, the Countess drank nothing, save from the glass of water beside her. The dinner proceeded in a stately way and the Countess spoke little, save to give me some scraps of dullish information about the history of the house and estate and the surrounding area, and to ask me a couple of cursory questions about my own work. There was no liveliness at all in her manner. She ate little, broke up a piece of bread into small fragments and left them on her plate, and seemed tired and distant. I was gloomy at the thought of spending the rest of a long slow evening with her and frustrated that the point of my journey had not been reached.
    At the end of dinner, the butler came to announce that coffee was served in the ‘blue room’. The Countess took my arm and we followed him down the long corridor again and through a door into a small, wood-panelled room. I barely felt the weight of her hand but the fingers were pale bones resting on my jacket and the huge emerald ring looked like a carbuncle.
    The blue room was partly a library, though I doubt if any of the heavy, leather-bound sets of books had been taken down from the shelves for years, and partly lined with dull maps of the county and legal documents with seals, framed behind glass. But there was a long polished table, on which were set out several large albums, and also the magazine with the article and the Venetian picture behind me, spread open. The butler poured coffee for me and a further glass of water for the Countess, helped her to a chair at the table before the books, and left us. As he did so, he turned the main lights down a little. Two lamps shone onto the table at either side of us and the Countess motioned for me to sit beside her.
    She opened one of the albums, and I saw that it contained photographs, carefully placed and with names, places, dates, in neat ink. She turned several pages over carefully without explanation or inviting me to look, but at last came to a double spread of wedding photographs from seventy or more years ago, sepia pictures with the bridegroom seated, the bride standing, others with