5
‘You will have brought your own towels and bedlinen,’ Frau Scherbatsky said, in her lowered, attractive, half-humming voice, ‘as I instructed, as I suggested, Herr Vogt, in my telegram. Other things I can supply, should you not have them for the moment. Soap, should you wish to wash yourself before tea, of which we shall partake in the drawing room in half an hour. Should you wish for hot water, Maria will supply you with some, if you ask her, on this occasion, since you have just arrived and had a tiring journey. I know all about trains, their effects on the traveller.’
She turned, smiling graciously, making a generous but unspecific wave of the hand.
‘Shaving soap,’ she carried on, continuing across the hall, ‘I can stretch to. My husband and boys, my two boys, were killed in the war, and I have their things, their possessions and bathroom necessities, which I have no undue sentimental attachment to, if you do not feel ghoulish at the prospect of shaving with the soap of a dead man, or three dead men, rather. It is better in these days that things should be used, and not preserved.
