The Swish of the Curtain

by Pamela Brown

  “That’s because I have such a boring person sitting next to me,” Maddy told her rudely. “But I shan’t today.”

  The bishop, who sat next to her, bowed. “Thank you, Maddy. A very nice compliment.”

  “I’m good at compliments.”

  “What do we do? Clap?” asked Jeremy sarcastically.

  They bickered for a while; then the bishop retired behind a copy of the Diocesan Mail, and they decided to play some games.

  “Let’s play ‘Detectives’,” suggested Nigel.

  “O.K. Who’ll be detective first?”

  There came a chorus of “Bags not I”, with Bulldog’s voice easily last.

  “All right, I’m Sherlock Holmes,” he acknowledged.

  “The bishop is the corpse,” whispered Maddy, and received another “Just you wait” look from Sandra. The Diocesan Mail quivered.

  “Now think up your stories,” said Bulldog, “and make them stinkers.”

  “What language, Bulldog,” remarked Lyn disdainfully.

  “Is everyone ready?” asked the detective. “I’m going to ask Lyn first.”

  “Now, listen to what I say and play up to it,” Lyn told the others.

  The idea of the game was to answer all the questions without contradicting a previous statement. Anyone who did make a contradiction was pronounced the murderer.

  “What is your name?” asked Bulldog.

  “N. or M.,” prompted Maddy aptly.

  “My name is the Comtesse de Rueville.”

  Bulldog produced a stub of pencil from one pocket, a notebook from another, and wrote it down.

  “Your age?”

  “I keep it a secret.”

  “But you can’t say that, Lyn,” Bulldog argued. “It’s not fair.”

  “O.K. I’m thirty-five.”

  “What is the name of the victim?”

  Maddy pointed to the bishop.

  “The Comte de Rueville,” replied Lyn.

  “Your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you the first to find the body?”

  “No, my maid Jeannette found him.”

  “Is Jeannette here?”

  “Yes,” answered Vicky and Sandra simultaneously, then laughed.

  “You can be it,” Vicky offered Sandra.

  “Thanks. Yes, I am Jeanette.”

  “You found the body first?”

  “Yes, in his dressing-room.”

  “How had he been killed?”

  “With a dagger.”

  “Did you recognize the dagger?”

  “Yes, it was always among the master’s things. He used it as a paper-knife.”

  “Where did the murder occur?”

  “In the master’s villa at Monte Carlo.”

  Bulldog turned to Lyn. “Madame la Comtesse, who were in the house at the time of the murder?”

  “Only myself, Jeannette, the cook Marie, the gardener Jacques, and an English couple, our friends, the Honourable Norman Langton and his wife Celia.”

  “I should like to question Maddy. Your name?”

  “Celia Langton.”

  “Where were you when the murder was committed?”

  “I was out yachting with my husband.”

  “Jeannette, what time of day did you find the body?”

  “Midnight,” replied Sandra foolishly.

  “How was it, Mrs. Langton, that you were yachting at that time of night?”

  “It was such bright moonlight that we could easily see to make a little trip,” replied Maddy.

  “Was this a habit of yours?”

  “Yes, we had done it often.”

  “Where were you, Comtesse, at the time of the murder?”

  “At the Casino.”

  “With whom?”

  “I went with my husband, but during the evening he disappeared, and I said to Celia, ‘Hadn’t we better be going?’”

  “You said that?”

  Lyn, without seeing her mistake, replied happily, “Yes, and so we all three came home about two o’clock in the morning.”

  “I accuse you of being the murderer!” shouted Bulldog triumphantly. “Celia was yachting.”

  “But this was another Celia,” Lyn hedged vainly.

  “It’s a rule of the game that you mustn’t include more people than the number playing. So you’ve murdered your husband.”

  “I did it because he was flirting with Jeanette,” Lyn explained, laughing. “Now then, I’m detective.”

  This time the game was long and complicated, and Lyn made everyone say the exact time of every move.

  “What was the time when you rang for the police?” she asked Maddy.

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “What was the time the last time you looked at the clock?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Well, was it morning, afternoon, or evening?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Don’t be silly, Maddy. Why can’t you?”

  “I lost my memory.”

  Lyn’s eyes danced. “Completely?”

  “Yes, I couldn’t remember a thing?”

  “Not a single thing?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you telephoned the police?”

  “Yes, it was an instinct told me to.”

  “And your memory hasn’t come back?”

  “No.”

  “And it left you the minute you saw the body?”

  “Yes.”

  “I accuse you of being the murderer. You must have remembered the telephone number.”

  “Jolly good, Lyn; one up to you,” applauded Nigel.

  “I’m detective, and I bet I catch the murderer sooner than Lyn did.”

  “I shouldn’t start another one,” advised the bishop, folding up his paper; “we have to change at the next station.”

  They reached up and got their suitcases from the rack, and stepped out on to the platform.

  “I’ve been sitting down so long,” complained Maddy, “that I feel drunk now that I am standing.” She staggered round in circles, till Sandra made her behave properly.

  “We have twenty minutes to wait,” said the bishop, “so what about a spot of tea?”

  “What about it?” repeated Maddy appreciatively. “Lead me to it!”

  They had some very dish-watery tea and doughnuts in the dowdy station buffet, then went back to the platform, where quite a number of people were waiting for the train. When it came in it was very full with people returning from market in a neighbouring town, and there was not an empty carriage to be found.

  “We shall simply have to split up,” the bishop told them, “and find a seat wherever we can. Luckily we change again in about half an hour at Gloucester, so keep your eyes open for the names of the stations.”

  When they assembled at Gloucester station Bulldog was missing, so Nigel was sent back on to the train to find him. He discovered him standing on the seat in an empty carriage holding his suitcase up in the air.

  “Come on, kid, do,” Nigel hurried him.

  “I can’t,” gasped Bulldog; “I’m attached to the communication cord, and if I move I shall pull it, and have to pay five pounds.”

  “You silly chump, however do you mean you’re attached?”

  Nigel, jumping up on to the seat beside him, saw that the keys of the case, which were attached to the handle by a short piece of yellow string, had got wrapped tightly round the cord.

  “We must hurry, Bulldog,” he said, “the train goes in a few seconds. You are an idiot!” Nigel pulled the cord roughly and instantly disentangled the keys. “Don’t you know the cord is pulled to stop the train? How can you stop it once it’s standing still? Come on, get a move on.”

  They jumped out on to the platform just as the station-master was blowing his whistle. Jeremy alone was waiting for them, a worried look on his face.

  “Come on, you two, we’ve simply got to fly. The bishop’s just discovered our train goes immediately, so he’s ru
shed off with the girls. We’ve got to get right down to the other end of the platform.”

  They ran for all they were worth, and Lyn, seeing them coming, stuck her head out and yelled, “Hurry up, train’s moving.” They jumped into the compartment and collapsed panting on the seat. When they had explained the cause of the delay the bishop said, “I thought perhaps you’d got out at the wrong station, Bulldog.”

  “I nearly did. I found myself squeezed between an elderly gentleman and the most awful specimen of a girl that you ever saw. Talk about a walking chemist’s shop! She smelt as if she had bathed in Eau de Cologne, and then she opened her bag and began to smarm lipstick all over her face!” Bulldog was truly disgusted.

  “I expect she wanted to look her best because of the handsome young man sitting next to her,” teased Maddy.

  “Well, I was no better off,” laughed the bishop. “I was sitting next to a very small girl, who was sucking very large aniseed balls, so the aroma was not even so sweet as the one you had to suffer, Bulldog.”

  “I prefer aniseed,” he growled.

  “I like aniseed balls,” announced Maddy.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t know that in time.”

  The bishop delved into his pocket and brought out several bars of chocolate, which he gave to Sandra to share out. He then retired again behind the Diocesan Mail.

  “Would you mind if we were to sing?” Lyn asked him. “We’re tired of detectives.”

  “Not at all. Sing away.”

  They sang all the French songs they knew, “Il était une bergère”, “Frère Jacques”, “Au clair de la lune”, “Cadet Roussel”, and “Il était un petit navire”. The last they syncopated, and shouted at the tops of their voices, until a lady came along the corridor, stuck her head through the door, and was about to admonish them when the bishop put down his paper, revealing his face; then he stood up and bowed.

  The lady blushed and said, “I’m sorry. I mistook the compartment,” and went away.

  The children choked with laughter, and the bishop joined in.

  “But I think, perhaps, the singing had better stop,” he said.

  Until they reached Worcester, an hour later, they played “Quotations”.

  “You start, Nigel.”

  “O.K. ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ Sandra. One – two – three – four…”

  But before he could reach ten Sandra said, “‘And the high-wayman came riding, riding, riding, up to the old inn door.’ Maddy.”

  “‘We’re riding along on the crest of the wave, and the world is ours.’ Jeremy.”

  “‘If all the world were paper, and all the sea were ink, and all the trees were bread and cheese, what should we have to drink?’”

  “How illiterate and childish!” scoffed Nigel.

  “Nigel, go on,” Jeremy ordered.

  But Nigel was stumped, and they counted him out in a maddening chorus.

  “You’ve lost a life,” crowed Jeremy.

  The bishop was so taken with this game that he joined in, and the time soon passed and they were at Worcester, where they were to change for the last time. They were much quieter on this part of the journey, and Maddy fell asleep, her head on Sandra’s shoulder. It was dark outside, so they pulled down the grey silk blinds when the electric lights went on.

  “We’re nearly there,” the bishop told them, looking at his watch. “I must say this train is very slow. What is the name of this station, Maddy?”

  Maddy blinked and craned her neck out of the window.

  “I can’t quite see the board it’s written on. Yes, I can. G-e-n-t-l-e-m-e-n.”

  “Shut up, Maddy,” the others shouted her down.

  At last the porter shouted the magic words “Stratford-on-Avon”, and they got out.

  “Well, we’re here,” said Lyn to Sandra, in a satisfied tone. “I was afraid we should have a crash on the way and never actually arrive.”

  “I expect you would all like a wash,” said the bishop, “if you feel as grubby as I do.”

  They made their ways to the cloakrooms. Washing her hands in the shiny white basin with the hot water sending shivers of delight over her body, Lyn smiled at her own reflection in the mirror.

  “Isn’t all this too, too divine?” she said. “We’ve never been anywhere like this alone together, with no grown-ups. The bishop doesn’t really count; he leaves us alone so much.”

  “And he doesn’t make a lot of boring plans, he just lets things happen, which is what I like,” said Vicky, dragging a comb through her burnished hair.

  “You look tired, Maddy. Feel it?” asked Sandra.

  The lines under Maddy’s round blue eyes belied her stout denials. Feeling much fresher than before, they went out to find the boys.

  “Here you are, then,” the bishop greeted them, pleased at the renewal of their neat appearances. “I certainly shall be proud if people take me for the father of you all.”

  “Where’s the mother, I wonder?” queried Bulldog.

  “Perhaps they’ll think Sandra’s our mother,” suggested Maddy. They howled with delight.

  “I should hope I don’t look old enough to have great louts like Nigel and Jeremy for sons.”

  “Oh, you’re our stepmother,” asserted Maddy. “You met the bishop just after you left school, and married him to look after his six children.”

  “How can you explain our difference in colouring, then?” Jeremy wanted to know.

  “Simple. He’s had two wives before Sandra, one fair, that explains Jeremy, and me; one ginger, that explains the twins; and Lyn and Nigel take after the bishop.”

  “Stop talking such piffle,” Sandra ordered her.

  They walked through the main street of the little gaily lit town, which was crowded with people.

  “It’s always like this on the eve of the Festival. Shakespeare lovers come from all over the world,” said the bishop.

  “How wonderful to think that one man’s writings can make an international understanding,” reflected Lyn.

  “And think what it’s done for the town itself,” remarked the more commercially minded Nigel.

  “I should say one could make a fortune out of a shop in this street, or a hotel.”

  “Where are we going to stay?” Sandra was anxious to know.

  “At the ‘Swan’. I stay there every year when I come for the Festival. It’s just along there, in front of us, look. A timbered place.” They arrived in front of the Elizabethan inn and looked up at the sign, a white swan on a black background. The curtains were drawn behind the latticed windows and the light shone through.

  “Doesn’t it look cosy?” remarked Vicky, and yawned. “I feel ready for bed.”

  “I feel ready for something to eat,” muttered Maddy as they went into the vestibule.

  The boots showed them up the winding, carpeted staircase to their rooms. The boys had a big room with one double bed and a single bed, over which they all quarrelled. In the end Nigel got the single bed by sheer survival of the fittest. In the girls’ room were two double beds.

  “I’ll sleep with the infant, as I’m more used to it,” Sandra said with an air of martyrdom.

  Then the bishop knocked on the door.

  “We’ll hurry down to the dining-room,” he said, “as our dinner is waiting for us.”

  They sat at a large table in the low-raftered room and ate an enormous meal. First came chestnut soup, then fried sole and chips, then guinea-fowl, then jelly and cream; and when the bishop said at the end of all this, “Who is having coffee?” Sandra laughed.

  “It’s obvious you’re not used to taking children out.”

  “What makes you say that, Sandra?”

  “Well, you’d know, if you were used to it, that we shall say yes to everything, unless you put your foot down.”

  “Perhaps I ought to say, ‘Who can take coffee without being ill tonight?’”

  “I shall be, anyhow,” said Maddy resignedly, “so I might as well be hang
ed for a sheep as for a lamb.”

  Afterwards Sandra told the bishop, “I don’t think we ought to go to bed yet, on top of this big dinner. Do you think we could go for a tiny walk, for the sake of our digestions?”

  The bishop looked doubtfully at his watch.

  “It’s nearly half-past ten, so mind you’re in by quarter to eleven and in bed by eleven. The earlier we’re about tomorrow morning the more we shall be able to see.”

  They ran upstairs for their coats and went out into the crowded streets again. All the passers-by were in a very gay mood.

  “Not the ‘gay’ that people are at Fenchester in Carnival Week, when all the pubs are drunk dry, but a more intelligent kind of gaiety,” differentiated Lyn.

  “It’s quite a small town, really,” remarked Vicky, as they found themselves at the end of the main street.

  “We’d better turn back now,” decided Sandra. “That is, if everyone feels capable of going to bed yet.”

  “I’m not a bit full now,” Maddy told them, as she carefully walked along a narrow strip of cobbles. “It’s amazing how much one can eat without suffering for it.”

  They reached the “Swan”, and said good-night on the warm brightly lit landing, along which reverberated the rhythmic snores of the bishop.

  The girls’ room was in the front of the hotel, just over the sign, and for a long time they sat on the broad window seat, in their dressing-gowns, listening to the people going by and the clock striking the passing quarter hours. When they at last got into their soft, cold beds, the time was after midnight. They lay in the darkness listening to the silence, which was now broken only by the bishop’s snores.

  “He’s driving his pigs to market,” remarked Maddy vulgarly, and intoxicated by the strangeness of their surroundings and the lateness of the hour, they had to stifle their laughter in the pillows. One giggle led to another, and once Vicky gave such a hoot of laughter that the bishop lost his pigs altogether, and they lay in petrified silence.

  In the boys’ room they were swapping yarns made up on the spur of the moment, but as Bulldog fell asleep just as the hero was rescuing the heroine the other two abandoned this and soon joined Bulldog.

  “I’m so excited,” confessed Lyn, “that I simply can’t sleep. Whatever sort of wreck shall I be tomorrow morning, I wonder.”

  Until the small hours of the morning they talked and talked, then, as the clocks struck three, they began to get drowsy. Vicky’s last waking thought was, “Bother! We’ve forgotten to say our prayers.”