by M C Beaton
Hope sprang eternal. Jenny had flown to Inverness and then caught a bus to Ullapool, then changed at Ullapool to a creaking local bus to take her to Lochdubh. Her hopes soared with every mile. So remote from London and so very beautiful. She was seeing the mountains and moors of Scotland as they are rarely seen, benign in sunlight. It had cost an awful lot of money, but already she felt sure it was all worth it. Somewhere at the end of the journey was the clever, sensitive and romantic man of her dreams.
§
Peter Trumpington drove his Mercedes with the real leather seats competently through some of the most dazzling scenery in the world—like Switzerland without people—and was completely unaware of the beauty around him. He would have been just as happy in London. But if this long journey meant a suitable bride, then this long journey had to be completed. All that was in his mind was the thought of a long cool drink and a hot dinner. He did not know Deborah Freemantle had been chosen for him, or anything about her.
§
Deborah was also driving along the one-track roads near journey’s end. She was employed as an editorial assistant with Dumbey’s Publishing, who produced large coffee-table books on art or country houses or other inoffensive and expensive subjects. She had been hired not for her brains, but because she did not expect to be paid very much, because her grammar was quite good and her enthusiasm boundless. She also had one great asset. She did not aspire to take her boss’s job. Dumbey’s was not a competitive firm, and editors liked to have inferiors who would not threaten their position. Her enthusiasm was not an act. She was genuinely enthusiastic about everyone and everything, which made up for her clumsiness and large backside. She had heavy Hanoverian features and rather thin brown hair. She bounded and giggled much as she had done at the expensive boarding-school she had once attended. She had made her come-out as a debutante, but things, her parents had decided, were not handled as in the old days, when a good dowry was enough to thrust a beloved daughter into marriage. Checkmate had been their idea. As with Jenny, this would be the first get-together she had attended. She was not very worried about it all. Mummy and Daddy usually knew best.
§
John Taylor, QC, alighted from the station at Inverness. He recognized Maria Worth, who was walking along the platform in front of him, but he did not hail her. To him, she was a sort of employee and he was not going to demean himself by sharing his taxi north with her.
The taxi-driver he asked to take him to Lochdubh explained it would probably cost him in the region of forty-five pounds. “Oh, get on with it,” snapped John, and climbed into the back seat.
Money was no object when it came to spiting his children. The trouble had started last Christmas in the family get-together at John Taylor’s country home in Buckinghamshire. His wife had died when the children were still young, and he considered he had done the best anyone could for daughter Penelope and son Brian. Brian was a lawyer like his father and quite a successful one. Penelope had married an affluent stockbroker. All was what it should be.
And then, coming down the stairs one morning before Christmas, he had overheard Brian and Penelope talking. “I wish we didn’t have to endure these ghoulish family affairs!” Brian was saying. “The old man has about as much Christmas spirit as Scrooge.”
Penelope gave her infuriating giggle and said, “He hasn’t been quite the same since they abolished hanging. He’s still boring on about bringing back the birch and the treadmill.”
And Brian had rejoined, “Only a few more days to go and then we can escape from his pontificating. But be sweet to him, Penelope. Your kids and my kids will soon be ready to go to public schools and you know what a mint that’s going to cost us. He can’t last much longer. He looks like a cadaver warmed up. He’s made his will and we both get the lot. So let’s continue to ho-ho-ho our way through this awful Christmas.”
John had retreated back upstairs. Hatred burned inside him. To cut them out of his will would not be revenge enough. After he was dead, he wouldn’t be around to see their stupid faces. He thought long and hard about ways to get even and then he decided to go to Checkmate and order them to find him a bride. They probably had someone on their books desperate enough.
§
Mary French had already arrived at Tommel Castle Hotel. Mary was always early for everything. She turned up at dinner parties at least an hour early. She had taken the train up to Inverness the day before and had got the first bus in the morning to Ullapool and then a cab from Ullapool to Lochdubh. She was not nervous in the slightest. Maria Worth might regret the fact that Mary had buckteeth and jug-ears, but Mary saw rare beauty when she looked in the glass. She taught at a girls’ school, one of the few that still employed only female teachers. That was why, she knew, she was not married. Men could only admire her from afar. The fact that she met plenty of men on her annual holidays did not count. Her aristocratic breeding had put them off. Checkmate would find her the right sort. They’d better, she thought with true aristocratic thrift. She was paying enough.
§
Maria got down to business with Mr Johnson as soon as she arrived. There was to be a drinks party before dinner; not in the bar, but in a small private room off the dining room.
Priscilla Halburton-Smythe was upstairs in her room, cursing as she took out a black dress. Two of the waitresses had gone off sick with summer colds. She could not risk getting some untrained woman from the village. She would need to act as waitress herself, and that meant taking round the trays of drinks before dinner as well. Thank goodness her father retained enough distaste for Checkmate to want to play ‘mine host’, or he would foam and huff and puff at the sight of his daughter in a waitress’s uniform, blissfully unconcerned that if she did not help, the dinner would be a disaster.
The programme for the week had been posted up in each of the Checkmate clients’ bedrooms. They were expected to present themselves for drinks at six-thirty. Priscilla went along the corridor to the maid’s cupboard and selected and tied on an apron. She hesitated over the cap but then decided she had better put one on and look the part.
She went down to the bar at six-thirty. Jenkins, the Halburton-Smythes’s former butler, now the maìtre d’hôtel, gave her a scandalized look as she walked through the hall. Jessie, the one waitress on duty, followed Priscilla into the room off the dining room. Maria was already there, wearing a scarlet evening gown. The barman was ready to take orders. All Priscilla and Jessie had to do was go to the bar and fetch them and, after that, serve the dinner, which Jenkins, with averted eyes, told her was all ready.
Maria saw nothing wrong with the daughter of the house acting as waitress. Tommel Castle was a terribly expensive hotel and she expected the best of service.
“I have checked the place-settings,” said Maria. “Everything is correct. The right people will be sitting next to each other. Nothing can go wrong. They should be here any minute.”
And then she looked over Priscilla’s shoulder to the doorway and turned a muddy colour. Startled, Priscilla turned round.
A large fat woman was standing there. Her hair was dyed a flaming red. She was wearing a huge loose flowered blouse over a pair of trousers and an old-fashioned corset, to judge from the bumps and ridges. Her small, cornflower-blue eyes were sunk in pads of fat, and she had a small, petulant mouth.
“Surprise!” she cried.
Maria recovered with an effort. “Peta,” she said in a hollow voice. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in Hungary.”
“Changed my mind,” said Peta triumphantly. “I called in at your office this morning and that silly secretary of yours said she didn’t know where you were. So I checked the computer and found the address. I got the plane to Inverness and a cab up. Don’t you think I’m clever?”
Maria rallied with a visible effort. “Peta, I’m sure this isn’t your scene.”
“Darling, of course it is. You know me…the merry widow. Oh, there she is. You haven’t met my niece, Crystal Debenham, have you?
Just back from finishing school in Switzerland.”
Maria stared. Disaster upon disaster. Crystal was so very beautiful in a smouldering kind of way: voluptuous figure, smoky-blue eyes, masses of brown hair highlighted with silvery-blonde streaks, pouting mouth, and wearing a dress so short it made her long, long legs look like a dream of desire. What man was going to look at any of her female clients with Crystal around?
“Pleased to meet you,” said Crystal in a languid, husky voice. She would have once, thought Priscilla, half-amused, half-exasperated, been called a vamp.
“Perhaps there are no rooms free, Peta dear,” said Maria.
“No, I called before I left London and got a couple of rooms.”
“Wouldn’t you like to change?”
“I never go in for that formal stuff,” said Peta cheerfully. She turned round. “This your lot?”
Headed by Mary French, who would have been there much earlier had she not laddered two pairs of tights and spent some time looking for another pair, came the clients of Checkmate.
Crystal just stood and smouldered. The men clustered round her and the females stood a little way away, watching gloomily, not even talking to each other.
“What can I get you to drink?” Priscilla asked Maria.
“Get me a double gin,” said Maria waspishly. She looked at Peta with loathing.
“And get a double arsenic for her.”
Chapter Two
The best laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft a-gley.
—Robert Burns
To Maria’s relief, the little knot of men around Crystal began to break up and she was able to seize arms and introduce the various clients to their proper partners. Crystal pouted slightly and swayed over to join her aunt.
The fact was, thought the ambitious Matthew Cowper shrewdly, that Crystal Debenham was the kind of girl one took to the pub to impress the other fellows. She was not the kind one married. She was extremely dull and had no talent for conversation whatsoever, the narcissistic Crystal considering looks enough.
Maria made it firmly obvious who was meant for whom, and Matthew was not sure that Jenny Trask was at all suitable. She was painfully shy and he wanted a firm, confident woman to help him in his career. The blonde beauty he had seen on his arrival, the one he had been so sure was meant for him, had turned out to be nothing more than an hotel waitress. He glanced at Priscilla and now saw only the uniform and not the beauty.
Jenny, ever polite, was struggling to make conversation by telling him about her job. He barely listened, his eyes roving over the rest of the females and coming to rest on Mary French, the schoolteacher, she of the sticking-out ears and buckteeth. Now there was class, from her pale, arrogant, self-satisfied look to her pearls and expensively dowdy dress. She had a hectoring carrying voice. He waited until Jenny had paused for breath, said, “Excuse me,” and slid off.
John Taylor was relieved to see him. Although he was well aware that he, John, was old and could not expect a young beauty to be put his way, Mary appalled him. When Matthew came up, John crossed the room and joined Jenny, found out she was a legal secretary in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in an office near his own, and happily began to talk shop.
Sir Bernard Grant barely saw the grey Jessica Fitt. He could not believe this was to be his partner. So he looked beyond Jessica’s dull face, looking for another candidate, and fell on Deborah Freemantle, who was bouncing and wriggling in front of Peter Trumpington. He heard her loud laugh and decided she looked like more fun than anyone else there. So he joined her, and Peter Trumpington, who for all his shallow-mindedness was nonetheless kind, went to speak to Jessica Fitt.
Maria took a deep breath of relief. They were not pairing off the way she had intended, but at least they were all talking to each other and the beautiful Crystal was ignored. Besides, once they found their place cards at the dinner table, they would once more be with their rightful partners.
But when she led the way into the dining room, it was to find that Peta had already taken the chair at the head of the table, with Crystal next to her. Then the others just ignored the place cards and sat down and talked to the person they had been talking to before.
The first course was cock-a-leekie soup, Tommel Castle priding itself on its traditional Scottish dishes. Peta rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She gurgled, she slurped, she inhaled soup like a human vacuum cleaner, first breaking great clumps of bread into it and mashing them up with her spoon.
“Who on earth is that great fat woman?” muttered Sir Bernard to Deborah. Deborah laughed wildly and said, “Gosh! I don’t know. Sickening, isn’t she?” and Sir Bernard began to think more and more that Deborah was his kind of girl.
The soup was followed by dishes of prawns in a delicate sauce. Peta wolfed hers down and turned to John Taylor, who was on her other side and looking at her in horrified amazement, and said, “I see you’re not eating yours,” and before he could protest, snatched his dish and ate those too.
The next course was unfortunately a rich venison casserole with a wine sauce and the casserole was placed at the head of the table in front of Peta. Peta waved Priscilla away and said she would serve. So the others soon found themselves looking down at small portions and then at the heaped mound of meat and sauce on Peta’s plate. She bent down and snuffled at it appreciatively before diving in. She also ate great piles of vegetables and three large baked potatoes with a whole dairy of butter. She then called for more bread and, pulling the casserole close to her ballooning bosom, she began to mop up the gravy, making appreciative smacking sounds with her lips.
Priscilla was sorry for Maria. She wanted to tell her that her party was going to be a success, not despite Peta, but because of Peta. They were all being drawn together by a communal resentment. And Crystal, because of being the horror’s niece, had rapidly lost any charms she might have had in the eyes of the assembled men.
The dessert was unfortunately meringues with cream and chocolate sauce. Powdered meringue soon dusted the glutton’s face, almost covering up the gravy stains. When the petits fours came along, Peta upended the plate of them into her capacious handbag. “I’ll keep these for later,” she said, beaming all around.
Maria turned to the hovering Priscilla and said in a thin voice, “Coffee in the lounge, I think, and some more petits fours, please. Peta, darling, you have had an exhausting journey. Why don’t you go and lie down?”
“You know, I think I might,” said Peta and yawned, a cavernous yawn, showing a coated tongue and bad teeth. She winked at Sir Bernard, “I’ll see you in the morning, sweetie.”
Crystal floated off in the wake of her aunt. Maria arranged her guests in a corner of the lounge, glad no other hotel guests were present.
John Taylor rose to his feet and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat and faced the group with that steely look in his eye and commanding appearance which had made him a highly paid prosecuting counsel. He began his cross-examination. “Now, Miss Worth, tell us (“in your own words,” thought Jenny) about this Peta woman. Who is she?” He stabbed a finger at Maria. “Why is she here? Is she one of your clients? Tell us.”
“If you will allow me to speak, I will,” said Maria, who had already made up her mind what she had to do. “Mrs Peta Gore is my partner. She put up half the money to help me get started. I tried to buy her out last year, but she would not go. I tried to keep this excursion to the Scottish Highlands a secret from her and I thought she was in Hungary. But she found out where I was. This has happened before, but not at anything so ambitious as this. So I am going to make you an offer. Each of you. Anyone here who has not found a marriage partner by the end of the week will have the cost of the hotel bill and travel refunded.”
There was a long silence. Then Deborah spoke up. “I think that’s jolly fair,” she cried. Sir Bernard said, “I’ll accept that,” and the others nodded agreement. John sat down feeling rather sulky. He had expected Maria to excuse and protest like a criminal in the do
ck. But she had behaved handsomely and spoilt his fun.
Priscilla bent over the table and arranged the coffee-pots. John said suddenly, “You know, my memory’s going. I feel I’ve seen someone in this group before, but in court.”
There were startled gasps. “Who?” cried Deborah, bouncing up and down on her large bottom. “You mean we might have a chain-saw murderer amongst us?”
John shook his head. “I’m probably wrong. The trouble is, I see so many criminals that everyone begins to look like one.”
Jenny Trask said, “I remember that famous case where you were the prosecutor for the Crown, that triple murderer, Jackson.”
“Tell us about it,” suggested Maria, accepting a cup of coffee from Priscilla.
He began to talk. Priscilla, standing on duty in the corner with the other waitress, remembered reading about the case in the newspapers. She felt uneasy. There never had been, surely, any really concrete evidence, and yet John Taylor had done a brilliant job and the man had gone to prison for life. Even talking about the case, John ceased to be a tired-looking man in his sixties and became enlivened with fire and venom. A columnist had once written that his success was due to the fact that he appeared to have a genuine hatred of the people he was prosecuting. The legal department of the newspaper must have had too liquid a lunch that day, for the column was printed and John Taylor had sued the newspaper for some reportedly vast sum, although the whole thing was settled out of court. And the female columnist came out of it unscathed because she was having an affair with the newspaper proprietor.
Then Priscilla saw her father coming into the room. The colonel had learned that there was an eminent Queen’s Counsel among the guests and so had decided to favour them with his presence. When the barrister had finished speaking, he asked them grandly if they were comfortable and then his choleric eye fell on his daughter in cap and apron.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing dressed up as a waitress?” he roared.
