by Daisy Waugh
‘Why are you shouting?’ asked Dominic.
Alice said: ‘I just wanted to make sure you heard.’
The house was messy, but not in an unpleasant way. In the kitchen was a faint smell of methane, and – if you happened to look – a wisp of green smog, floating into the far corners of the room. But Geraldine was gone.
The light and warmth inside, combined with the weed she’d smoked, made Alice feel light headed. She giggled as she offered Dominic a drink. Dominic assumed it was because she fancied him, which helped him to feel more at ease. He thanked her for the glass of red wine. Put his hat and the bag onto the kitchen table and plonked himself into the seat just vacated by Geraldine.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘This is awfully nice! You’ve made it terribly cosy.’ He frowned, trying to work out how, exactly. ‘What have you changed? It feels so much more welcoming.’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ Alice said. ‘Bits and bobs. Pictures and things – nothing much.’ But Alice, accustomed to thinking very little of her small efforts in life, undersold herself on this occasion. It turned out, now she didn’t have the triplets wreaking havoc, that she had quite a knack for making a living space agreeable.
‘Well whatever it is you’ve done, it’s marvellous. You’ve transformed the place,’ he was exaggerating. Alice was aware of that.
She said: ‘You knew the place from when Lady Tode was living here, I suppose?’
‘Lady Tode, yes… Dear Emma.’ He sighed. ‘You knew her as a child, I think? Didn’t your grandmother work for her, donkeys’ years ago?’
‘She did. My grandmother was very fond of her.’
‘Ah yes, well. A lot of people were.’
‘Including you, I imagine?’
‘Indeed. Very much so. I was very fond of her,’ he said. He sighed again, looking quite miserable. He fiddled with the shopping bag, and after a moment, glanced up at Alice with a forced smile. ‘Well, that’s life isn’t it! Emma had her difficult sides, but she was a very special lady.’
‘I’m sure she was.’
He looked nervous, Alice thought. He kept fiddling with the bag, as if he wanted to hand it over, and yet something was holding him back. She said: ‘Are you all right, Dominic? What’s in the bag?’
‘Nothing.’ He snatched it off the table.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing at all,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Come on! What have you got in that posh shopping bag? I’m curious now.’
But he didn’t want to tell her. In fact, for a moment he seemed to have lost the power of speech. He simply clutched the bag tight and shook his head. And then – he could only have been in the house for five minutes – he picked up his glass and swallowed its contents in one. ‘I really ought to be going,’ he said.
‘What, already? You’ve only just got here.’
She glanced at the shopping bag, clasped tight between both hands, and tried to make out a shape. He clasped it tighter. Alice couldn’t help laughing again. ‘What have you got in there? Body parts?’
‘Body parts? Body parts! What a ridiculous idea! Of course I don’t have body parts. If you must know,’ he said, ‘it’s a cream. A face cream. Not mine.’
‘Oh.’ Alice waited to hear more, but Dominic, it seemed, felt he had already said more than enough. He placed his Stetson back on his head, adjusted it to the right angle, without the aid of a mirror, and stood up. It suited him, she noted (as she assumed he was aware). He was certainly a handsome man. If you liked actors. Alice had endured a couple of relationships with actors over the years, and overall she wasn’t sure that she did. They tended, she thought, never to know when to stop acting. Dominic looked silly standing in her kitchen, in the middle of a Yorkshire rose garden, talking about face cream and worrying about the angle of his hat. ‘Well it was good to see you,’ she said. ‘Thanks for dropping in.’
‘The pleasure was all mine,’ he said. ‘Thank you for inviting me in.’
‘All right then.’
They stood opposite each other, looking at each other: Alice wondering what had put the wind up him so; Dominic not really knowing what to think. The room smelled strongly of cannabis, he noted. And he wasn’t certain he liked her. She was weird and unforthcoming, and harder-than-most women to charm. Nevertheless for his own sake, for everyone’s sake, he realised, it would be easier if they were friends.
So he hugged her tightly. (She didn’t like that.) He thanked her much too effusively for inviting him in, and apologised much too effusively for having to leave so soon. He gushed about the wine, the kitchen décor, the smell of her perfume, the colour of her mud-brown hippy dress, and shimmied out into the darkness whence he came, clutching tight to the mysterious bag of beauty cream.
CHAPTER 35
India had not overestimated the extraordinary pull of her big house. Not a single guest turned down her invitation – even after India, who was fond of her own children but found other people’s tiresome, told the guests that they had to leave their children at home. ‘Aren’t people snobs!’ India said to Alice. She thought it was hilarious.
She had invited twenty guests, most of them couples. They were the flashiest she could muster at the exact time she was mustering, and she’d not done badly. Several were quite famous: a TV presenter, an actor, an heiress ‘style icon’, a clothes designer, a celebrity chef, a publisher, a celebrity ecologist, a film producer, a radio show host, two TV producers, a film director, four bankers, including one featured on the Sunday Times Rich List, two former Vogue cover girls (both now banker spouses), an American-born gossip magazine editor… and finally, India’s afterthought: the house party’s least glamorous, least impressive and (which was quite something) most toxic guest, Hamish Tomlinson, society painter of pets. India had emailed him as an afterthought, post the dinner with the vicar and his wife and when she was still quite drunk – only because his name had come up when she was in bed with Dominic that afternoon.
Their relationship had ended after he ‘ghosted’ her – decades before the verb was invented. She called and wrote, and wrote and called, but after the one measly shag (albeit an adept one, and indeed her first) he had never contacted her again. What a bastard. Hamish Tomlinson. Society painter of pets. Society shagger. Society vulture and creep.
He was a friend of her parents, briefly, and the only man who ever came close to breaking her heart, for which she had never quite forgiven him. India invited him to join the glamorous house party in a flash of carefree malice, because she imagined it might, at last, make him feel a fool for having treated her so badly.
‘Plus,’ she said to Alice, as she was talking her through the guest list, ‘he thinks he’s cleverer than everyone. And he’s got massive status anxiety, due to only being a quite successful painter and not having any money. So it’s going to make him feel really rotten, seeing me here queening over everything!’ She cracked up, laughing merrily at the prospect of his unhappiness, and Alice laughed with her. India’s laugh was infectious.
* * *
On India’s insistence – she told Egbert she was ‘sick to death of looking out the window and seeing nothing but grockles and weirdies peering in’ – it had been agreed that the gardens be closed to the public for the Saturday.
This was unpopular with the Estate Offices. Mrs Danvers and Nurse Ratched both took Egbert aside to warn him of the dire consequences of an unscheduled garden closure – and Egbert, with his sensible hat on, found it hard to disagree with them. Tode Hall Gardens were always open. It was one of Yorkshire’s great certainties. That and the rain. If people started not knowing whether the gardens were open or not, there was a grave danger they would decamp to Chatsworth, where there was also an excellent gift shop, and a café selling top-of-the-range cakes. Egbert knew this. He also knew that the estate staff hated his wife, whom he loved. So he thanked them for their concern, tried his best to make them feel appreciated – and went ahead with the closure anyway. India had wanted to close for the e
ntire weekend. As a compromise, they had settled for just Saturday.
He might never have worded it quite the way his wife did, but Egbert, too, would enjoy a day at the Hall without the tourists. Aside from that, though, as he confided in Alice, he ‘probably wasn’t massively looking forward to the weekend’. He didn’t know any of the people India had invited – any more than India did of course. But India was an extrovert. She thrived in these sort of social situations; Egbert, on the other hand, tended to feel lost and unnecessary, and generally longed to be allowed to slip off to bed.
Some of the guests had wanted to arrive on Friday night but India was quick to put a stop to that. She sent out a round robin email to clarify, and laughed as she showed it to Alice: ‘Why do they want to come for two nights anyway? They don’t even know us.’
‘Because they’re already paying for the train fare?’ suggested Alice.
‘Nonsense! They’re all very rich. Apart from Hamish, obviously. They’re only coming so they can put it up on their stupid Instagram… Seriously, Alice,’ she added earnestly, ‘do you think a single one of them would have spared Egbert or me five minutes if we were living in Wandsworth, and poor Eggie was still just an estate agent?’
‘I doubt it,’ agreed Alice.
‘You see?’ said India. ‘So it’s my way or the highway. I’ve got it seriously planned out. They have to arrive on Saturday in time for dindins, and definitely not before tea. And I’ve told them they have to bring black tie or fancy dress… and then at the dinner I’m going to make a big announcement about the house being a film location et cetera et cetera, which they’re going to have to listen to. Don’t tell Eggie, though. He’ll think it’s a bit much. But otherwise, seriously, what’s the point of having them there?’
‘Good question,’ said Alice.
‘Right. So during dinner, I’m going to get Dominic to do his thing. Haven’t told him yet, though. So don’t. Don’t tell him, OK?’
‘What “thing” are you going to get him to do?’
India looked at Alice as if she was stupid. ‘He’s going to kick off the whole murder mystery thing, obviously… With his acting. Come on Alice! Wakey-wakey! And Mellors has agreed to be the dead body, which we’ll “discover” during the after-dinner runabout. Please don’t tell Eggie, Alice. He’ll think it’s super inappropriate, what with the inquest and everything…’
‘Maybe it is, a little bit?’
India rolled her eyes. ‘And then Dominic, once he’s done his acting bit, is going to sort of “recover”, and lead the guests, whilst sort of pretending he’s still dying, but being very brave about it, so it’s a good opportunity for his acting, into whatever room we decide Mellors will be found dead in, and then—’ India waved the details aside, ‘we – rather, the stupid guests – have to work out who killed him! What do you think?’
Alice frowned, quite confused. ‘Well – but who did kill him?’
‘What? I don’t know – there’s stuff on the internet. Just got to look it up. All the instructions for, “How to organise a murder mystery weekend”. It’s very easy, apparently. You just have to get a few clues, like in Cluedo. And basically, dot them around the house, and then accuse one of the guests of having done the deed. Laughs-all-round. Everybody’s pissed, so nobody much cares either way. The end. Keeps the guests busy… Plus – and I know you think I’m an idiot, Alice, but I’m actually not. Not really – it emphasises the house as a setting for drama, do you see? So the idea gets implanted into the brains of all our stupid coked-out guests – hey, this would be a good place to set a TV drama-stroke-blockbuster movie-stroke-whatever. Get it? Film set comes to Tode Hall. We hang out with movie stars. Tode Estates gets rich. No more tourists in the garden every day of the bloody week. We all live happily ever after.’
‘… OK…’ said Alice.
‘Don’t worry Alice! I’ve got it all worked out!’
CHAPTER 36
Only Hamish was permitted to arrive before tea. He arrived on the midmorning train and India herself drove to the station to pick him up. Egbert was working (he was always working) and the children had been taken by Weronika to a funfair in York. So India and Hamish had the day to themselves. They spent it roaming the estate, India showing off her newly acquired empire and completely forgetting to remember not to flirt, because it turned out she still quite fancied him, after all these years – despite his looking even more like a rat than she remembered.
Hamish had lately discovered a passion for poisonous plants, which he claimed, with his artist’s eye, tended toward a specific kind of beauty. He showed her some pictures of deadly nightshade on his iPhone and India said, ‘Oh, we’ve got some of those!’
‘Of course you have,’ said Hamish. ‘You’ve got some of everything.’
She smirked. ‘You should have been nicer to me when you had the chance, Hamish Tomlinson. I am probably the richest and most important person you know!’
He didn’t respond. She was wrong, in any case. Hamish only knew rich and important people. He didn’t know anyone else. Didn’t even know the name of his cleaner. So.
The thing about Hamish: he just wasn’t very nice. At some point (quite early) in the maturation, Hamish Tomlinson had simply curdled. Most people have a saving grace: and it’s true, Hamish was a decent painter. He had a good figure. He was well read. He could be witty, sometimes. And he was, in his chilly way, mysteriously adept in the sack. Other than that? Niente. Hamish wasn’t even kind to dogs. He didn’t tip waiters. He never gave up his seat to pregnant women on buses. He never spent his own money if somebody else had a wallet nearby. In fact he never did anything for anyone else, ever. And yet, here he was, once again, with one of the prettiest and richest women in the country, eating out of his hand.
He and India found a bed of winter foxgloves during their flirtatious ramble, and they chortled and flirted a great deal, discussing which of the guests they might decide to poison during this weekend of murder and mystery, should they feel inclined. They would take a few leaves with them back to the house, crush them up and drop them into somebody’s food…
‘It might add some genuine drama to the weekend,’ as Hamish put it. ‘At the moment it all sounds more like a mid-management team-building away-day than a civilised house party.’
India was stung by that. But she didn’t show it. She told Hamish she would very much like to poison Carfizzi. Which wouldn’t be at all hard, she said, because he was very greedy. She could just sprinkle the leaves on a box of chocolates and leave the box open in the kitchen.
Hamish said that if she felt that strongly about Carfizzi, she should go ahead and do it.
‘You make it sound like a dare,’ said India, flirtatiously.
‘It is,’ he flirted back.
They picked a few leaves, giggling as they did so, and wrapped them in Hamish’s clean handkerchief.
He said, ‘While you’re at it, could you be a sweetheart and poison that bastard, Dominic Rathbone? I can’t believe he’s still hanging around at Tode Hall.’
This took India by surprise. She hadn’t been aware that they knew each other. Hadn’t, in fact, been aware – until he let it drop on the way back from the station – that Hamish had been to Tode Hall before – which he had, in the eighties, many times, when employed by Emma to paint her cocker spaniel, Dante, now dead.
Dominic would probably know where the Dante paintings were stored. He would have known all about Hamish, and yet when she’d mentioned his name, in bed that afternoon, Dominic had never said a thing (because he hadn’t been listening, but this didn’t occur to her).
‘I didn’t know you two knew each other,’ she said, making it sound lighter than she felt.
‘Rivals in love,’ Hamish replied, which piqued India’s interest no end. But, typically, he refused to go into details.
Aside from that, which India found irritating, also a little disturbing, it was a wonderful afternoon. They were both sorry when it grew dark and India had to retu
rn to the house to catch up with the children and check in with arrangements for dinner.
* * *
The Red Dining Room – the dining room the family usually used and which was closest to the kitchen – was too small for such a large number of guests. And the problem with Tode Hall, as India once explained to Alice, straight-faced, was that it didn’t really have a ‘medium-sized’ dining room. There was either the Long Gallery which could seat 150 or more; or the Red Dining Room, or the East Dining Room, both of which could comfortably seat up to twenty, but which, when the numbers rose any higher, became what India called ‘a disgusting squish’.
Tonight they would be twenty-four, including India, Egbert, Dominic and Alice. Nobody wanted a disgusting squish, so India asked Mr and Mrs Carfizzi to lay up in the Long Gallery. ‘And spread everyone out, will you?’ she said. ‘It’ll be hilarious. Like in those New Yorker cartoons when they have to telephone each other, to pass the salt…’
Mr Carfizzi tipped his head as if to imply receipt, but inwardly he seethed: India seemed to think these grand occasions were an opportunity for humour. She completely missed the point.
When Lady Tode had run the show, she’d developed a typically elegant way to get around the lack of an appropriate-sized dining room. Diners would be arranged around the long table’s centre, with a roaring fire behind them, and candles in silver candlesticks winking and glittering the full length – not just of the table but of the entire, enormous room. This is what he intended to do, and it would be beautiful. Whether India liked it or not.
CHAPTER 37
The guests arrived en masse, in a convoy of shiny four-wheel drive Mercedes and Range Rovers, and in good time to change for dinner. Carfizzi welcomed them in, served them drinks and gave them instructions to reconvene for further drinks, in black tie or fancy dress if they had brought it, in the Chinese Drawing Room at seven. He showed them to their rooms.
