by Ngaio Marsh
‘He was splendid.’
‘Good. You spotted him, of course?’
‘What?’
‘Spotted him, I said – Great Grief!’ Cressida exclaimed, ‘I’m beginning to talk like Aunt Bed. You saw, didn’t you?’
‘Saw? What?’
‘Him.’
‘Who?’
‘Moult.’
‘Moult?’
‘You don’t tell me,’ Cressida bawled, ‘that you didn’t realize? Sharp as you are and all.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It wasn’t –’ An upsurge of laughter among the guests drowned Cressida’s next phrase but she advanced her lovely face towards Troy’s and screamed: ‘It was Moult. The Druid was Moult.’
‘Moult!’
‘Uncle Flea’s had a turn. Moult went on for the part.’
‘Good Lord! Is he all right?’
‘Who?’
‘Uncle – Colonel Forrester?’
‘I haven’t seen him. Aunt B’s gone up. I expect so. It seems he got over-excited again.’
‘Oh!’ Troy cried out. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘I know. Still,’ Cressida shouted, ‘just one of those things. You know.’
Nigel appeared before them with his champagne cocktails.
‘Drink up,’ Cressida said, ‘and have another with me. I need it. Do.’
‘All right. But I think there’s rather a lot of brandy in them, don’t you?’
‘There’d better be.’
Hilary broke through the crowd to thank Troy for her present: it was a wash-drawing she had made of the scarecrow field from her bedroom window. He was, she could see, as pleased as Punch: indistinguishable thanks poured out of him. Troy watched his odd hitched-up mouth (like a camel’s, she thought) gabbling away ecstatically.
At last he said: ‘It all went off nicely, don’t you think, except for Uncle Flea’s gloves? How he could!’
Troy and Cressida, one on each side of him, screamed their intelligence. Hilary seemed greatly put out and bewildered. ‘Oh no!’ he said. ‘You don’t tell me! Moult!’ And then after further exclamations, ‘I must say he managed very creditably. Dear me, I must thank him. Where is he?’
The over-stimulated little boy appeared before them. He struck an attitude and blew a self-elongating paper squeaker into Hilary’s face. Toy trumpets, drums and whistles were now extremely prevalent.
‘Come here,’ Hilary said. He took Cressida and Troy by their arms and piloted them into the hall, shutting the doors behind them. The children’s supper was laid out in great splendour on a long trestle table. Kittiwee, the boy and some extra female helps were putting final touches.
‘That’s better,’ Hilary said. ‘I must go and see Uncle Flea. He’ll be cut to the quick over this. But first tell me, Cressida darling, what exactly happened?’
‘Well, I went to the cloakroom as arranged, to do his make-up. Moult was there already, all dressed up for the part. It seems he went to their rooms to help Uncle Fred and found him having a turn. Moult gave him whatever he has but it was as clear as clear he couldn’t go on for the show. He was in a great taking-on. You know? So they cooked it up that Moult would do it. He’d heard all about it over and over again, of course and he’d seen the rehearsals and knew the business. So when Uncle Fred had simmered down and had put his boots up and all that (he wouldn’t let Moult get Aunt B), Moult put on the robe and wig and came down. And I slapped on his whiskers and crown and out he went into the courtyard to liaise with Vincent.’
‘He really did manage all right, didn’t he? I came in for his entrance. I couldn’t see him awfully well because of being at the back but he seemed to do all the things. And then when he eggzitted I returned to the cloakroom and helped him clean up. He was in a fuss to get back to Uncle Fred and I said I’d tell Aunt B. Which I did.’
‘Darling, too wonderful of you. Everybody has clearly behaved with the greatest expedition and aplomb. Now, I must fly to poorest Flea and comfort him.’
He turned to Troy. ‘What a thing!’ he exclaimed. ‘Look! Both you darlings continue in your angelic ways like loves and herd the children in here to their supper. Get Cuthbert to bellow at them. As soon as they’re settled under the eyes of these splendid ladies, Cuthbert and the staff will be ready for us in the dining-room. He’ll sound the gong. If I’m late don’t wait for me. Get the grown-ups into the dining-room. There are place-cards but it’s all very informal, really. And ask Cuthbert to start the champagne at once. Au revoir, au ‘voir ‘voir,’ cried Hilary running upstairs and wagging his hand above his head as he went.
‘All jolly fine,’ Cressida grumbled. ‘I’m worn to a frazzle. But still. Come on.’
She and Troy carried out Hilary’s instructions and presently the adult party was seated round the dinner-table. Troy found herself next to her acquaintance of the moors, Major Marchbanks, who said politely that this was a piece of luck for him.
‘I was too shy to say so when we met the other afternoon,’ he said, ‘but I’m a great admirer of your work. I’ve actually got one of your pictures and who do you suppose gave it to me?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘Can’t you? Your husband.’
‘Rory!’
‘We are old friends. And associates. He gave it to me on the occasion of my marriage. And long before yours, I expect. He may not have even met you then.’
‘I don’t paint in the same way now.’
‘But it’s been a development, I venture? Not an abandonment?’
‘Well,’ said Troy, liking him, ‘I choose to think so.’
Mr Smith was on her other side. He had heard about Moult’s gallant effort and was greatly intrigued. Troy could feel him there at her left elbow, waiting to pounce. Several times he made a rather sly exclamation of ‘Oi,’ but as Major Marchbanks was talking she disregarded it. When she was free she turned and found Mr Smith with his thumbs in his armholes and his head on one side, contemplating her. He gave her a sideways chuck of his head and a click of his tongue. ‘Oi,’ he repeated. Troy had taken a certain amount of champagne. ‘Oi, yourself,’ she replied.
‘Turn up for the books, Alf Moult making like he was Nebuchadnezzar in a bathrobe.’
Troy stared at him. ‘You know, you’re right,’ she said. ‘There was something distinctly Blakian. Disallowing the bathrobe.’
‘Where’s he got to?’
‘He’s up with the colonel, I think.’
‘’E’s meant to be doling out mince-pies to the little angels.’
‘That’s as it may be,’ Troy said darkly and drank some more champagne.
Hilary had arrived and had sat down beside a lady on Major Marchbanks’s left. He looked slightly put out. Mr Smith called up the table to him. ‘’Ow’s the colonel?’ and he said: ‘Better, thank you,’ rather shortly.
‘The old lady’s keeping him company, then?’
‘Yes.’ Hilary added some appropriate general remarks about his uncle’s disappointment and signalled to Cuthbert, who bent over him with a major-domo’s air. None of the servants, Troy thought, seemed to be at all put out by the presence of so many of Her Majesty’s penal servants. Perhaps they enjoyed displaying for them in their new roles.
Hilary spoke quietly to Cuthbert but Cuthbert, who seemed incapable of quiet utterance, boomingly replied: ‘He’s not there, sir,’ and after a further question: ‘I couldn’t say, sir. Shall I enquire?’
‘Do,’ said Hilary.
Cuthbert made a slight, majestic signal to Mervyn, who left the room.
‘That’s peculiar,’ said Mr Smith. ‘Where’s Alf gone to hide ’is blushes?’
‘How do you know it’s Moult they’re talking about?’
‘They said so, di’n they?’
‘I didn’t hear them.’
‘It’s peculiar,’ Mr Smith repeated. He leant back in his chair and fixed his beady regard upon Hilary. He did not pick his teeth. Troy felt that this was due to some acciden
tal neglect in his interpretation of the role for which he so inscrutably cast himself.
She drank some more champagne. ‘Tell me, Mr Smith,’ she began recklessly, ‘Why do you – or do you –’
But Mr Smith was paying no attention to Troy. His attention was fixed upon Mervyn, who had returned and was speaking to Cuthbert. Cuthbert again bent over his employer.
‘Moult, sir,’ he intoned, ‘is not on duty in the hall.’
‘Why the devil not!’ Hilary snapped quite loudly.
‘I’m sure I can’t say, sir. He received instructions, sir. Very clear.’
‘All right, well, find him, Cuthbert. He’s wanted with the colonel. Mrs Forrester won’t leave the colonel by himself. Go on, Cuthbert. Find him. Go yourself.’
Cuthbert’s eyebrows mounted his forehead. He inclined, returned to Mervyn and raised a finger at Nigel with whom he finally left the dining-room. Mervyn remained in sole command.
Hilary looked round his table and said, laughingly, and in French, something about the tyranny of one’s dependents which, Troy imagined, was incomprehensible to all but a fraction of his guests.
She turned to Major Marchbanks. She was now fairly certain within herself that she would be showing great strength of character if she were to refuse any more champagne. She looked severely at her glass and found it was full. This struck her as being exquisitely funny but she decided not to interfere with it.
‘Who,’ asked Major Marchbanks, ‘is Moult?’
Troy was glad to find that she was able to give him a coherent answer. ‘Do you,’ she asked, ‘find this party very extraordinary?’
‘Oh, but completely fantastic,’ he said, ‘when one looks at it objectively. I mean four hours ago I was doing the honours at The Vale Christmas feast and here I am with three of my warders, drinking Bill-Tasman’s champagne and waited upon by a company of you know what.’
‘One of them – Cuthbert, I think – was actually at The Vale, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh yes. He’s an old boy. I recommended him. With appropriate warnings, you know. I really think he rather likes displaying his waiter’s expertise for us Vale persons. He was at the top of his profession was Cuthbert.’
‘He’s given me a morsel too much to drink,’ Troy said carefully.
Major Marchbanks looked at her and burst out laughing. ‘You don’t tell me you’re tiddly?’
‘That would be going too far, which is what I hope I haven’t. Gone,’ Troy added with dignity.
‘You seem all right to me.’
‘Good.’
‘I say,’ Hilary said leaning towards Troy and speaking across the intervening guests, ‘isn’t it too boring about Moult? Aunt Bed won’t budge until he relieves her.’
‘What can he be doing?’
‘Flown with success, I dare say, and celebrating it. Here’s to your bright eyes,’ Hilary added and raised his glass to her.
Troy said. ‘Look. I’ll nip up and relieve Mrs Forrester. Do let me.’
‘I can’t possibly –’
‘Yes, you can. I’ve finished my lovely dinner. Don’t stir, please, anybody,’ said Troy and was up and away with a celerity that greatly pleased her. At least, she thought, I’m all right on my pins.
In the hall the children’s supper party was breaking up and they were being drafted back into the drawing-room. Here they would collect their presents, move to the library and gradually be put in order for departure. On their account the party would be an early one.
At the foot of the stairs Troy encountered Cuthbert.
‘Have you found Moult?’ she asked.
‘No, madam,’ Cuthbert said making a sour face. ‘I don’t understand it at all, madam. It’s very peculiar behaviour.’
(So, Troy irrelevantly thought, is killing a commis while you’re carving a wing-rib.)
She said: ‘I’m going up to relieve Mrs Forrester.’
‘Very kind, I’m sure, madam. And too bad, if I may say so, that you should be put upon.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Troy lightly.
‘Moult!’ Cuthbert said. He actually spoke softly but with such a wealth of venom that Troy was quite taken aback. She continued upstairs, and finding herself a bit swimmy in the head, went first to her own room. There she took two aspirins, put a cold sponge on the back of her neck, opened her window, stuck her head out and gasped.
Two snow flakes touched her face: like the Ice Maiden’s fingers in Hans Andersen. She paused for one moment to look at the deadened landscape and then shut her window, drew her curtains and went to call on the Forresters.
III
Colonel Forrester was in bed and awake. He was propped up by pillows and had the look of a well-washed patient in a children’s ward. Mrs Forrester sat before the fire, knitting ferociously.
‘Thought you might be Moult,’ she said.
Troy explained her errand. At first it looked as if Mrs Forrester was going to turn her down flat. She didn’t want any dinner, she announced, and in the same breath said they could send up a tray.
‘Do go, B,’ her husband said. ‘I’m perfectly well. You only fuss me, my dear. Sitting angrily about.’
‘I don’t believe for a moment they’ve really looked for him, I said –’
‘All right, then. You look. Go and stir everybody up. I bet if you go, they’ll find him.’
If this was cunning on the part of the colonel it was effective. Mrs Forrester rammed her knitting into a magenta bag and rose.
‘It’s very kind of you,’ she snarled at Troy. ‘More than that yellow doll of Hilary’s thought of offering. Thank you. I shall not be long.’
When she had gone the colonel bit his underlip, hunched his shoulders and made big eyes at Troy. She made the same sort of face back at him and he gave a little giggle.
‘I do so hate fusses,’ he said, ‘Don’t you ?’
‘Yes, I do rather. Are you really feeling better?’
‘Truly. And I’m beginning to get over my disappointment, though you must admit it was provoking for me, wasn’t it?’
‘Absolutely maddening.’
‘I hoped you’d understand. But I’m glad Moult did it nicely.’
‘When did you decide to let him?’
‘Oh – at the last moment. I was actually in the dressing-room, putting on my robe. I got a bit stuck inside it as one can, you know, with one’s arms above one’s head and one’s mouth full of material and I rather panicked and had a turn. Bad show. It was a crisis and there had to be a quick decision. So I told him to carry on,’ said the colonel as if he described a tight corner in a military engagement, ‘and he did. He put me in here and made me lie down and then he went back to the dressing-room to put on the robe. And carried on. Efficiently, you thought?’
‘Very. But it’s odd of him not to come back, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is. He should have reported at once. Very poor show indeed,’ said the colonel, drawing himself up in bed and frowning.
‘You don’t think he could have gone straight to your dressing-room to take off the robe? There’s a door from the passage into the dressing-room, isn’t there?’
‘Yes. But he should have made his report. There’s no excuse.’
‘Would you mind if I just looked in the dressing-room? To see if the robe is there?’
‘Do, do, do, do,’ said the colonel.
But there was no golden robe in the dressing-room which, as far as Troy could judge, was in perfect order. A little crimson room it was, with a red flock wall-paper and early Victorian furniture. Heavy red curtains on brass rings were drawn across the windows. It might have been a room in Bleak House and no doubt that was exactly the impression Hilary had intended it to make. She looked in the cupboards and drawers and even under the bed, where she found a rather battered tin box with ‘Col. F. Forrester’ painted in white letters on it. Remembering Hilary’s remarks upon their normal luggage, she supposed this must contain the Forresters’ valuables.
Some
where, a long way off, a car door slammed. She thought she could hear voices.
She half opened the curtains and heard more doors slam and engines start up. The guests were leaving. Rays from invisible headlamps played across the snowy prospect, horns sounded, voices called.
Troy rattled the curtains shut and returned to the colonel.
‘Not there,’ she said. ‘I suppose he left it in the cloakroom downstairs. I must ask Cressida – she’ll know. She took his whiskers off.’
‘Well, I’m jolly furious with Moult,’ said the colonel, rather drowsily. ‘I shall have to discipline him, I can see that.’
‘Did he show himself to you. In the robe? Before he went downstairs?’
‘Eh? Did he now? Well, yes, but – well, in point of fact I dozed off after my turn. I do that, you know,’ said the colonel, his voice trailing away into a drone. ‘After my turns. I do doze off.’
He did so now, gently puffing his cheeks in and out and making little noises that reminded Troy of a baby.
It was very quiet in the bedroom. The last car had left and Troy imagined the house-party standing round the drawing-room fire talking over the evening. Or perhaps, she thought, they are having a sort of hunt-for-Moult game. Or perhaps he’s been found sleeping it off in some forgotten corner.
The colonel himself now slept very soundly and peacefully and Troy thought there was really no need for her to stay any longer. She turned off all the lights except the bedside lamp and went downstairs.
She found a sort of public meeting going on in the hall. The entire staff were assembled in a tight, apprehensive group being addressed by Hilary. Mrs Forrester balefully sat beside him as if she was in the chair. Mr Smith smoking a cigar stood on the outskirts like a heckler. Cressida, looking exhausted, was stretched in a porter’s chair with her arms dangling and her feet half out of her golden sandals.
‘– and all I have to tell you,’ Hilary was saying, ‘is that he must be found. He must be somewhere and he must be found. I know you’ve got a lot to do and I’m sorry and really it’s too ridiculous but there it is. I don’t know if any of you have suggestions to make. If you have I’d be glad to hear them.’
