Weekend at Thrackley

by Alan Melville

  Edwin Carson walked slowly round the cases and peered into each. The lights twinkled on his heavy glasses, turning the lenses from gold to palest green and on again to the colour of the rubies at which he was staring. A magnificent collection—carefully planned, artistically presented… a pity that it could not be shown in some more accessible spot. No, not such a pity, thought Edwin Carson; for it would be agony to see these gems paraded in some museum or art collection for all the idiots in Christendom to peer at, to poke their umbrellas at, to mutter “Isn’t it lovely?” or “Aren’t they marvellous?” Much better for the pleasure of it to be reserved for him, Edwin Carson—who knew every millimetre of every facet of these stones, who understood them and appreciated them as no other person in the world could do. And, incidentally, much safer to keep a collection like this in a cellar whose entrance very few persons knew. Very much safer indeed.

  It took him quite a while to walk round the cases and examine the contents of each. He stopped for a minute before the case where a dozen pearls lay on a cloth of dark blue velvet, bathed in a soft white light. And he thought of Marilyn Brampton playing bridge upstairs, and of a spot far down her back where the triple rope of pearls which she wore twined round her neck and falling down her back ended in a large and perfect specimen. And, thinking of Marilyn’s back, he remembered also that he was host to what he hoped was a charming weekend house-party, and told himself that he had better get on with the arrangements before his guests upstairs became fidgety in his absence.

  At the end of the long narrow room stood a heavy oak desk. He crossed to it, pushed his finger on one of the several little discs inlaid in the side of the desk, and picked up the receiver of the telephone in front of him. In the kitchen above him Jacobson the butler looked up from the paragraph headed “The Above Have Arrived”, said, ungrammatically and unattractively, “Hell! That’s him!” and crossed to the the dresser where the telephone stood.

  “That you, Jacobson?” said the voice of Edwin Carson.

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to come down to the cellar for a minute.”

  “You down there? Here… you’re supposed to be playing Up Jenkins with the guests, aren’t you?”

  “Shut your mouth, Jacobson. Come down here at once, and bring the rest with you.”

  “All right.”

  And Jacobson banged the receiver back in its holder and turned towards the other occupants of the kitchen.

  “Downstairs. All of you,” he said. “Toot sweet.”

  “The lot of us?”

  “That’s what I said. Where the hell’s Burroughs? Always off by himself, that bloke. Washing the car, I suppose… God help his babies if ever he has any.”

  At his desk downstairs Edwin Carson waited for five minutes. Then a bulb in the wall at the other end of the cellar showed itself in a red light. He pressed another of the tiny discs at his side, and listened again to the faint whirr of the lift. When it stopped he stretched out his fingers and pressed… the doors of the lift slid open and Jacobson and the other three servants stepped out.

  “Come over here,” said Edwin Carson.

  They crossed the room and stood in front of the desk, staring at the little man behind it. The staff of Thrackley numbered four and were all of the stronger sex. When Thrackley became inhabited again, George, the son and heir to the Hen and Chickens, had given generous odds to all in the bar-parlour that he would be on walking-out terms with the new housemaid within a week. George, being, much to the worry of his father and to the detriment of the Hen and Chickens’ business, that kind of a lad. It was a pity that none of the bar-parlour habitués accepted George’s odds, but then they had known the lad since he was so high and had learned to appreciate his powers where women were concerned. If, of course, they had seen the staff of Thrackley as Edwin Carson was seeing them now, they would have jumped at even shorter odds, for young George was not the one to waste his summer evenings meandering through Adderly woods with his arm round the waist of a six-foot-three bruiser with a club foot. Such being the person who carried out most of the household duties at Thrackley. And carried them out surprisingly well, as Catherine Lady Stone herself admitted when she found her suitcases unpacked and her weekend’s luggage neatly folded away or carefully swinging from clothes-hangers. And those excellent sauces which had accompanied that admirable dinner had been made, too, by another of the bruisers. (Had Lady Stone known this she would, in all probability, have eaten considerably less at dinner; which would have been all to the good, for the veal à l’espagnol was beginning to have words with the savoury and to have an effect on her bidding.) The chauffeur, Burroughs, completed the quartet standing in front of Edwin Carson. Perhaps the best-looking of the four, though that might still be taken as an insult rather than a compliment. A tall, thin man with powerful muscles and an intense love of taking risks… whether in passing the car in front in a traffic-laden street or in any of the other duties which he had to perform at Thrackley. The kind of man that suited Edwin Carson.

  “Kept me waiting down here for five minutes… where the devil have you all been?”

  The thick lenses of Carson’s spectacles turned and shone up at Jacobson.

  “Burroughs was out in the garage,” he answered. “Had to go and find him.”

  “At this time of night? Doing what, Burroughs?”

  “Something wrong with the carburettor, sir. I was getting it fixed in case any of the visitors wanted the car to-morrow.”

  (The only one of the four who used that word “sir”. A good man, this Burroughs…)

  “That’s all right, then. Now, about to-night.”

  The four men edged a little closer to the desk. “Lady Stone… you all know which is her room?… opposite the stairs leading to the main landing on the second floor… what I want to… borrow… is a ruby set as the centre stone of a choker necklace. She was wearing it at dinner to-night. A beautiful stone, perfect… quite perfect. You noticed it, Jacobson?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Splendid… now… I should imagine that my guests will retire round about midnight. I’ll get them off earlier than that if I can. Jacobson, you will get that necklace from Lady Stone’s room. She uses an old-fashioned jewel-case, I believe; probably she’ll lock it and sleep with the key under her pillow. She’s that kind of a woman.”

  “Nasty suspicious type,” said Burroughs.

  “Exactly. You’ll have to bring the whole case with you, Jacobson.”

  “Right.”

  “You, Kenrick, will stay on the second landing and see that everything is all right up there. Burroughs, you further along the passage at the other side of the house—keep a look-out for those two Bramptons. You down here, Adams, with everything ready. Understand?”

  Four nods.

  “If anyone turns up or anything goes wrong, signal to me from your nearest point. I’ll give the warning to Jacobson.”

  The four stood in silence for a minute. Then Jacobson spoke.

  “What about the girl?”

  “Mary? I’ll take care of her. Now, everything clear, Jacobson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kenrick?”

  “Yes.”

  “All clear, Adams?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you, Burroughs?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right,” said Edwin Carson. “And now I must be getting back to my guests. Very thoughtless of me to desert them like this… very thoughtless indeed. What will they be thinking of me?… dear, dear, dear…”

  And the little man led the way back to the lift.

  VIII

  At precisely six minutes before midnight Catherine Lady Stone laid her four remaining cards on to the table with a flourish. “The last heart,” she said. “And those three on the table. A very nice little helping hand, that was, Captain Henderson.” And Jim picked up the
marker and pencil, and decided that the guardian angel who hovered over bridge tables must have a peculiarly warped mentality to allow Lady Stone to get away with it as she had done all evening. “Forty below,” he said. “And twenty-four above. And two-fifty for the rubber… check that, will you, Freddie?” And the Honourable Freddie Usher roused himself from the stupor in which he had been following suit and throwing away and losing his queens in his opponents’ finesses, licked the point of his pencil and made a few gestures which he hoped would give the impression of an addition, and said, “Quite right. Nine hundred down.” Addition: at this time of night!… “Nine hundred, Lady Stone,” said Jim. “That’s four and sixpence.”

  “Splendid,” said Lady Stone, and gloated at the thought of it. “Damn!” thought Marilyn Brampton, and fumbled in her pochette, and vowed that she would never lift another card during her visit to Thrackley, and hoped devoutly that this Usher ass would have the decency to run Henry and herself back to town and so save thirteen shillings and eightpence train fare. “And now I must really get off to bed,” said Catherine Lady Stone. “It’s so rarely that I get a chance of being in bed early—so many things to attend to in the evenings, you know—and I want so much to be up early to-morrow morning and go for a nice long walk before breakfast. So very good for one… don’t you think so, Mr. Usher?”

  “Eh? Oh! Ah!” said Freddie, rallying suddenly. “Quite. Exactly.”

  “Then perhaps I shan’t need to go alone? Nothing like having a companion on a long walk. Makes the miles simply fly. And I do so want you to hear all about the little garden-party that I’m getting up for the Disabled Seamen’s Children’s Fund. Lady Plumb-Drummond and I are doing the organizing of it, you know. And dear Raoul has promised to come and dance for us if her manager or whoever it is will allow her… such a deserving cause… a quarter to eight, shall we say?”

  And Lady Stone collected her spectacles and spectacle-case and her diamanté bag and her two handkerchiefs and heaved herself from her chair.

  “Going off so soon?” said Edwin Carson. “But it’s early yet.”

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Carson. I’m really very tired… the country air, I think… and I had a very heavy day in town before I left… three committee meetings… and dear Mr. Usher has insisted that I go for a long walk with him before breakfast to-morrow. So…”

  “Well, if you must leave us, then… But the rest—you’re not all going to bed so soon, are you?”

  But the rest were all going to bed so soon, as it happened. For Raoul had got just a little tired of this Brampton thing staring at her, and the Brampton thing’s back was aching rather badly with keeping up the adoring position into which he had curved himself over the piano. And Marilyn Brampton had no desire to lose anything more at sixpence a hundred. So Edwin Carson led his guests from the lounge and up the wide staircase and to their various rooms. Again Mr. Carson behaved as all perfect hosts should behave: hoping that they would sleep well, that their beds would be comfortable, that the noise of the pine-trees outside their windows would not be disturbing, that they would not hesitate to ring if they required anything, that they would rise in the morning just whenever they wished and not a moment earlier. Breakfast, he assured them all, was an elastic affair starting… shall we say?… at eight-thirty and available until… well… elevenish. “Good night, then, Lady Stone,” said Edwin Carson.

  “Good night, dear Mr. Carson,” said Lady Stone. And feeling that something of the kind was called for, she added vaguely: “And thank you terribly for everything.”

  “Good night, Miss Brampton.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night, Mr. Brampton.”

  “’Night.”

  And Edwin Carson took Raoul’s arm and led her off along the corridor to show her to her room. And took, Jim noticed, a remarkably long time in doing so.

  He turned to say good night to Carson’s daughter before he and Freddie went on to the third floor where their bedrooms were. “Good night, Miss Carson,” he said.

  “Good night… and thank you.”

  “Thank you? For what?”

  “For not giving me away—about being in the village.”

  “Oh, that. But, listen, Miss Carson, surely you’re—”

  “Good night.”

  And within a few minutes half a dozen doors had closed behind the half-dozen guests of Thrackley, and there was a brief period of activity followed by silence and stillness. Catherine Lady Stone squatted on the edge of her bed, and kicked off her evening slippers and wiggled her toes and ran her fingers over her tired feet. She found her spectacles and her diary and her fountain-pen and she entered up the day’s happenings in a microscopic and quite illegible handwriting. (A diary-keeping sort of woman, as well.) “At Henrietta’s in the morning,” she wrote, “re bridge drive for Wed. week. Lunch at Simpson’s and then to S. about Dis. Seamen’s. Children’s garden-party. Left town at 4.15 for Thrackley—delightful place, looks damp but doesn’t seem to be. Mr. Carson v. charming but v. ugly, promises subscription to Dis. Seamen before I leave. Raoul person from Alhambra among the guests—persuaded her to dance at g.-party if her manager allows her. Remember write Lady P.-D. about this in case she fixes up with Gertie Collins—no use having both and Raoul much better attraction. Won 9s. 9d. at bridge, auction, contract unknown here. V. excellent crêpes Suzettes for dinner.”

  And Lady Stone blotted and closed her diary and screwed the cap on to her fountain-pen and put both pen and diary back in her ample leather handbag. She stretched her fat arms heavenward and disappeared for quite a while in the folds of her black evening gown; when she emerged again she was rather redder in the face and just slightly out of breath. These modern dresses were the very devil to get in and out of if one didn’t have a modern figure to match. And Lady Stone touched her hair in a few vital spots, causing whatever it was that was keeping it up to stop doing so, and the hair leapt down her back in thick black folds. She put it through a severe programme of combing and brushing, did some more attachments to it, and finally tucked it all away beneath a boudoir cap of pale pink silk. Then, with a good deal of groaning and gasping and blowing, she uncorsetted herself and peeled her stockings from her flabby legs, and threw various garments on various chairs until the bedroom looked very like the last day of a remnant sale at Pontings. She disappeared into a loose-fitting nightdress (embroidered around the neck with a border of extremely repellent violets), and shoved the hot-water bottle a little further down the bed so that both her feet and her posterior would hit a warm spot when at last she slid between the sheets. She took out her teeth and placed them carefully in a tumbler of water. She patted her pillows into her favourite position. She stretched out her hand to switch the main light off and the bed-reading-light on. And then she said “Oh!” and “God bless my soul!” For Catherine Lady Stone had almost forgotten to remove the priceless choker necklace that she was wearing. Almost forgotten—for the first time for years. Heavens! Imagine going to sleep with that necklace still around her neck. Supposing someone had come into the room during the night—-just an ordinary burglar, say. And had seen it. And pinched it. Or, worse still, strangled her with it and then pinched it. Catherine Lady Stone went hot and then very cold at the thought, and took the necklace off carefully, and laid it on its bed of navy-blue velvet in the second compartment of her jewel box. She turned the key of the case, and pushed it under her pillow. Not that a burglar or anything like that would get into a place like Thrackley… but still, you never knew. And Lady Stone turned out the light, heaved herself into bed, sat for a moment and wondered if there was any chance of getting the Countess of Cranell to present the prizes at the bridge-drive on Wednesday week, and lay back on the pillows and stretched up her arm to turn off the bed-light. For five minutes the noise of the breeze feeling its way through the pines outside the bedroom window was the only sound in the room. Then the rhythmic beat of a heavy asthmatic
breathing filled the room and made the swishing of the pine-branches a poor second. Catherine Lady Stone, it was fairly obvious, was asleep.

  On the floor above, Jim Henderson undressed slowly and thought deeply on quite a number of things. Of Lady Stone, and what immense legs the woman had, and what foul calls she made at bridge. Of Raoul the dancer, and what a surprisingly long time had passed before he heard old man Carson returning from seeing her to her room. Of Edwin Carson, and the conversation they had had together in the study. Of Mary Carson, and what a damned good-looking girl she was even when you looked at her closely, and how she had behaved when Freddie and he were on the point of recognizing her as the girl on the bicycle. And why the devil shouldn’t she want Papa Carson to know that she was cycling through Adderly village? Had it been a surreptitious visit to some miserable male of whom Edwin Carson did not approve? An unpleasant thought. Though, if that were the case, he was quite in agreement with Edwin Carson’s disapproval. Probably not at all the sort of fellow for a nice girl like that. A nasty greasy specimen, more than likely. Like Henry Brampton. Worse, perhaps.

  He folded his trousers carefully and screwed them down between the jaws of the press which he had found in his wardrobe. He pulled the cord of his dressing-gown around him, and lit a last cigarette before going to bed. He selected one of the books by his bedside and sat down on the settee: a big, comfortable settee which, he imagined, would make dressing in the morning a slow and restful affair. He read for ten minutes, cackling occasionally at Oscar Wilde’s epigrams, though he had read them many times before. And then he threw his cigarette-stump into the fireplace… a charming modern fire-place, in shaded tiles of blue, fitted with an imitation pile of wood logs as an electric fire. And…