by M C Beaton
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied.
‘In that case, how about a bet to see which of us bags the first brace?’
And so the bet had been made, for five thousand pounds.
It had seemed perfectly reasonable and sportsmanlike at the time, especially to a mind mellowed with good claret. And five thousand pounds meant little to Jeremy. But now, sitting down by the fire and thinking it over, he began to have doubts.
Did Peter Bartlett actually have five thousand pounds to bet? He had met the captain before, briefly, at various social events in the Highlands and in London. He had always seemed a bit of a sponger, always broke. Why, then, was he so eager to bet what would be to him a large sum of money? What was Bartlett up to?
Anyway, the details were to be worked out the next night, when there was to be a buffet party held in this chap Henry Withering’s honour, for Colonel Halburton-Smythe had suggested that the bet be made known to all the guests in case anyone wanted to make a side bet.
Still wondering what Bartlett could be up to, Jeremy Pomfret fell quietly asleep.
He snored gently through the noisy welcome being given to that famous playwright Henry Withering.
‘This is where we turn off,’ said Priscilla, slowing the car. ‘We take this secondary road. The main road goes along the front of the village and stops outside the Lochdubh Hotel.’
For the first time that long and weary day, the scenery pleased Henry Withering’s eye. ‘Stop the car a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s lovely.’
The village of Lochdubh lay on the shores of a sea loch of the same name. It consisted of a curve of eighteenth-century cottages, their white walls gleaming in the soft late-afternoon sun. A riot of pink and white Scottish roses tumbled over the garden fences. The waters of Lochdubh were calm and mirror-like. The air smelled of roses, salt water, seaweed, tar, and woodsmoke. A porpoise broke the glassy surface of the water, rolled lazily, and then disappeared. Henry drew a deep breath of pleasure as he watched the circle of ripples from the porpoise’s dive widening and widening over the loch. A keening voice raised in a Gaelic lament arose from someone’s radio.
‘It makes London seem very far away – another country, a wrong world of bustle and noise and politics,’ said Henry, half to himself.
Priscilla smiled at him, liking him again. She let in the clutch. ‘We’ll soon be home,’ she said.
The car began to climb up a straight single track road away from the village. They reached the crest of the road and Henry twisted his head and looked back. The village nestled at the foot of two towering twisted mountains, their sides purple with heather. Then he realized they had stopped again. ‘It’s all right, darling,’ he said. ‘I’m too hungry to admire the scenery any longer.’
‘It’s not that. I just want to have a word with Hamish.’
Henry looked at her sharply. Her cheeks had a delicate tinge of pink. He looked ahead.
A tall, thin policeman was strolling down the road towards them. His peaked cap was pushed back on his head, and his fiery red hair glinted underneath it. He was in his shirtsleeves, and the shine on his baggy uniform trousers above a large pair of ugly boots made it look as if he had ironed his trousers on the wrong side. He was carrying a bottle of Scotch under his arm.
What a great gangling idiot, thought Henry, amused.
But as the policeman recognized Priscilla and came up to the car, his thin face was lit up in a peculiarly sweet smile of welcome. His eyes were greenish-gold and framed with thick black lashes.
‘It’s yourself, Priscilla,’ said the policeman in a soft, lilting accent.
Henry bristled like an angry dog. Who did this village bobby think he was, addressing Priscilla by her first name? Priscilla had rolled down the window. ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘I would like to introduce Hamish Macbeth, our village policeman. Hamish, this is Henry Withering.’
‘I heard you were coming,’ said Hamish, bending down from his lanky height so that he could look in the car window on Priscilla’s side. ‘This place is in a fair uproar at the thought o’ having a famous playwright among them.’
Henry gave a cool little smile. ‘I am sure they are also excited to learn that Miss Halburton-Smythe is finally about to be married.’
One minute the policeman’s face was at the car window, the next it had disappeared as he abruptly straightened up. Henry looked angrily at Priscilla, who was staring straight ahead.
Priscilla muttered something under her breath and opened the car door, nudging Hamish aside. Henry sat listening to their conversation.
‘I did not know you were engaged,’ he heard Hamish say softly.
‘I thought you would have heard,’ Priscilla whispered. ‘You, of all people. You always hear the gossip first.’
‘Aye, weel, I heard something to that effect, but I chust could not believe it,’ said Hamish. ‘Mrs Halburton-Smythe was aye saying you was to marry this one or that one.’
‘Well, it’s true this time.’
Henry angrily got out of the car. If he did not say something to stop this tête-à-tête, he had an awful feeling Priscilla was going to apologize to this village bobby for having become engaged.
‘Evening, Officer,’ he said, strolling around to join them.
‘Why on earth are you carrying around that great bottle of whisky?’ asked Priscilla.
‘I won it at the clay-pigeon shooting over at Craig.’ Hamish grinned.
‘What an odd colour of Scotch,’ said Priscilla. ‘It’s very pale, nearly white.’
‘Weel, ye see,’ said Hamish with a smile, ‘the prizes was being giffen away by the laird, and his wife was alone in the tent wi’ the prizes afore the presentation.’
‘That explains it,’ giggled Priscilla. She and Hamish smiled at each other, a smile that held a world of understanding and friendship from which Henry felt excluded.
‘Explains what?’ he demanded sharply.
‘The laird’s wife likes a drink,’ said Priscilla. ‘She drinks half what’s in the prize bottles and then fills them up with water.’
She and Hamish burst out laughing.
‘I am sure we are keeping you from your duties, Officer,’ said Henry in what – he sincerely hoped – was his most patronizing tone of voice.
Hamish looked thoughtfully down at the playwright, his eyes, which a moment before had been full of laughter, suddenly blank and stupid.
‘Aye, I’ve got to feed the hens,’ he said. He touched his cap and turned away.
‘Wait a minute, Hamish,’ cried Priscilla, ignoring Henry’s fulminating glare. ‘Mummy’s having a party tomorrow night in Henry’s honour. Do come as well. It’s drinks and buffet. Come at seven. Mummy doesn’t like late affairs.’
‘That’s verra kind of you,’ said Hamish.
‘It’s … it’s black tie,’ said Priscilla.
‘I hae one o’ those,’ said Hamish equably.
‘I mean dinner jacket and …’
‘I’ll find something.’
‘See you then,’ said Priscilla brightly.
Hamish loped off down the road. Priscilla turned slowly to face an outraged fiancé. ‘Have you gone right out of your tiny mind?’ demanded Henry.
‘Hamish is an old friend,’ said Priscilla, climbing back into the car.
Henry got in beside her and slammed the door shut with unnecessary force.
‘Was that copper at any time anything more than an old friend?’
‘Of course not, silly,’ said Priscilla. ‘You must remember, I know everyone in Lochdubh.’
‘And are all the local yokels coming to this party?’
‘No, Mummy’s a bit of a snob and Daddy’s worse and …’
Priscilla’s voice trailed away.
She cringed inside as she thought of what her mother would say when she learned Hamish Macbeth had been invited.
Hamish – of all people!
Chapter Two
cad. Since 1900, a man devoid of fine instincts or delicate feel
ings.
– The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang
Jeremy Pomfret decided to have a bath before dinner. He shared a bathroom with Peter Bartlett and it was situated between their two bedrooms.
He threw off his clothes and wrapped his dressing gown around him. He pushed open the bathroom door and stood transfixed. Peter Bartlett was standing with one foot up on the washbasin, scrubbing his toenails. He was a very handsome man, dark and lean, with one of those saturnine faces portrayed on the covers of romances. He had a hard tanned face and a hard tanned body of which Jeremy was able to see quite a lot because the captain had only a small towel tied about his waist.
‘I say,’ bleated the horrified Jeremy. ‘That’s my toothbrush you’re using.’
‘Oh, is it?’ said Peter indifferently. ‘Give it a good rinse. It’s not as if I’ve got AIDS.’
‘Don’t you realize the enormity of what you are doing?’ demanded Jeremy in a voice squeaky with outrage. ‘You’re always pinching a chap’s stuff. Yesterday it was my shaving brush. Now you’re scrubbing your filthy toes with my toothbrush. Haven’t you anything of your own?’
‘It’s all somewhere around,’ said Peter vaguely. ‘Met the playwright yet?’
‘No, I fell asleep,’ said Jeremy crossly, ‘but I must say –’
‘I know him.’
‘How?’
‘Met him in London before I rejoined the army. Awful little Commie he was then.’
‘I’m sure it was just a pose,’ said Jeremy, darting forward and snatching his toothbrush. He looked at it hopelessly and then threw it in the waste basket.
‘In fact,’ went on Peter, easing his foot down from the handbasin, ‘this damned cold dump is crawling with skeletons out of my closet. The only person going to be at this party tomorrow night who I don’t know is the village bobby.’
‘What’s he coming for? To guard the silver?’
‘No, Priscilla asked him as an honoured guest. Henry told her parents about it before the rapturous welcomes were over, and Halburton-Smythe hit the roof. He sent one of the maids down to the village with a note to the bobby to tell him not to come. Priscilla ups on her hind legs and calls him a snob, Mother joins in, and they were all at it hammer and tongs when I last saw them. But if I know Priscilla, she’ll get her way in the end.’
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever stayed here,’ said Jeremy. He was still smarting over the loss of his toothbrush, but he never had the courage to assert himself over anything. ‘It’ll be the last. I’ve never stayed anywhere quite so cold before. As soon as I bag my birds, I’ll be off.’
‘You might not win,’ said Peter, leaning his broad shoulders against the bathroom wall.
Jeremy shrugged. ‘Clear off, if you’ve finished, old man, and let me have a bath.’
‘Righto,’ said the captain, opening the door out of the bathroom that led to his room.
Jeremy sighed with relief and advanced on the bath. A grey ring marred its white porcelain sides.
‘Dirty sod!’ muttered Jeremy in a fury. ‘Absolute dirty rotter. Complete and utter cad!’
Priscilla put down her hairbrush as she heard a knock at her bedroom door and went to answer it. Henry stood there, smiling apologetically.
‘I am sorry, darling,’ he said, taking her in his arms, and noticing again with irritation that she was several inches taller than he.
Priscilla extricated herself gently and went and sat down again at the dressing table. ‘It was a bit thick,’ she said. ‘Did you have to tell them I’d invited Hamish as soon as we got in the door? I told you they wouldn’t like it.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t yet told me why you were so bloody damned anxious to ask the bobby in the first place.’
‘I like him, that’s all,’ said Priscilla crossly. ‘He’s a human being and that’s more than you can say for most of the guests here. Jessica Villiers and Diana Bryce have never liked me. The Helmsdales are crashing bores. Jeremy’s a twit. I don’t know much about the gallant captain, but it reminds me of that rhyme about knowing two things about the horse, one of them is rather coarse. Prunella and Sir Humphrey are innocent sweeties but hardly strong enough to counteract the rest. Oh, let’s not quarrel about Hamish. He’s not coming and that’s that. Don’t dress for dinner. It’s informal this evening.’
‘Kiss me if you don’t want to quarrel.’
Priscilla smiled and turned up her face. He kissed her warmly, and although she seemed rather to enjoy it, her reaction could hardly be called passionate. But it was not sexual desire that had prompted Henry to propose. Priscilla was, to him, all that a future bride should be. He loved his new fame, he loved the money that came with it, and he loved his press image of being the darling of the upper set. The first moment he had set eyes on Priscilla, he had immediately seen her standing on the church steps beside him dressed in white satin and being photographed by every society magazine. She enhanced his image.
‘Did you want to ask me something?’ asked Priscilla when he had stopped kissing her.
‘Yes, there doesn’t seem to be a bath plug, and Mrs Halburton-Smythe told me not to ring for the servants because they don’t have very many and the ones that she has might give notice if they had to run up and down the stairs too much.’
‘Where is your room?’
‘In the west turret, the one at the front.’
‘Oh, that room. The plug in that bathroom was lost ages ago and we keep meaning to get another. But it’s quite simple. It’s a very small plug hole. You just stick your heel in it.’
‘Not exactly gracious living.’
‘No one really lives very graciously these days, unless you want masses of foreigners as servants, and Daddy is suspicious of anyone from south of Calais. I must say, you have rather grand ideas for an ex-member of the comrades.’
‘I never was a member of the Communist Party.’
‘But what about all those early plays of yours? All that class-war stuff.’
‘It’s the only way you can get a play put on these days,’ said Henry with a tinge of bitterness. ‘The big theatres only want trash. Only the small left-wing theatres will give the newcomer a chance. You’ve never said anything about Duchess Darling. Did you like it?’
‘Yes,’ said Priscilla. She had not liked it at all, thinking it silly and trite, but all her other friends had loved it, and Priscilla was so used to being at odds with them in matters of taste, she had begun to distrust her own judgement.
‘I’ll give you some of my better stuff to read when we get back to London,’ he said eagerly.
He looked down at her with affection, enjoying the cool beauty of her blonde looks. When he received his knighthood, as he was sure he would, she would look regal in the press photographs.
He bent and kissed her again. ‘I shall go and put my heel in the plug hole. I hope your mama has put us together at dinner.’
‘Probably not,’ said Priscilla. ‘But we shall survive.’
Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant, clad only in pink French knickers and transparent bra, was sitting on the end of her bed, painting her toenails scarlet.
Her husband was sitting at the dressing table trying to add some more curl to his large handlebar moustache with his wife’s electric hair curler.
‘Your roots are showing,’ he said, studying the top of his wife’s bent head in the mirror.
‘Well, they’ll just need to show. I once went to the hairdresser here and the girls were so busy gossiping they nearly burned my scalp off. Seen Withering yet?’
‘No,’ said Freddy Forbes-Grant, ‘but I’ve seen that rotter, Bartlett.’
‘Damn!’ Vera’s hand shook suddenly, and the bottle of nail varnish tipped over on the carpet.
‘Used to be pretty thick with him, didn’t you?’ pursued Freddy.
‘Me? Course not. For God’s sake, bring over that bottle of remover and help me clear up this mess.’
‘Peter’s here,’ said Diana Bryce, flouncing into Jessic
a Villiers’s room and banging the door behind her.
Jessica had been busy applying blusher to her cheeks. She stopped with the brush in mid-air. ‘Awkward for you,’ she said with an ugly laugh.
‘Poor, poor Jessica,’ said Diana sweetly. ‘You will maintain that fiction that Peter ditched me. Everyone knows I ditched him. But you were so crazy about him, poor lamb, you couldn’t believe anyone would want rid of him.’
‘Well, I ditched him before he got engaged to you on the rebound,’ said Jessica breathlessly.
Diana eyed her with malicious amusement. ‘Is that the case? I really must tease him about it.’
‘And I must tease him about being given the push by you.’
Both girls glared at each other, and then Diana gave a little laugh. ‘What nonsense we’re talking. Who cares about him anyway? I thought we came to see the playwright.’
‘Yes,’ said Jessica slowly. ‘I had almost forgotten.’
Henry Withering enjoyed dinner that evening immensely. He enjoyed the excellent food and the fake baronial dining room, hung with medieval banners that had been made in Birmingham twenty years before, when Colonel Halburton-Smythe had decided to redecorate the castle himself. He thought it was like a stage setting. The Halburton-Smythes did not run to footmen, but there were plenty of efficient Highland maids to serve the cold salmon hors d’oeuvres, followed by roast saddle of venison. There was a stately English butler to pour the wine. Lady Helmsdale, who was seated on Henry’s right, did not once look at Captain Bartlett. Henry was rather sorry for Priscilla, who was at the other end of the table, with Lord Helmsdale on one side and old Sir Humphrey on the other. Henry had at first been wary of the good-looking captain, knowing of old his reputation with women, but in the drawing room before dinner, Priscilla had shown not the slightest flicker of interest in Peter Bartlett. Jessica and Diana had made a dead set at Henry, all very flattering and just as it should be. The fameless years of neglect were gone.
Henry was so busy being happily deafened by Lady Helmsdale’s loud and fulsome compliments that he was unaware of any other conversation at the table.
