Was it my imagination, or did I hear a distant shout of, “M-m-m-marvelous!”?
Wednesday
CHAPTER 8
Pardon me if I’m mistaken, reader, but did you anticipate a body at the beginning of this chapter? If so, then you were mistaken. We all appeared for breakfast on Wednesday morning, if not bouncing with health and strength, at least capable of buttering toast. Osgot-Edge, I’ll grant you, made buttering his slice look as laborious as painting a ceiling. Amelia, on the other hand, was more bobbish than ever. She announced, “I’m planning parlor games this evening, so I don’t want anyone sneaking off to the billiard room after dinner.”
Lady Holdfast, another who managed to be gratingly boisterous, clapped her hands and cried, “Parlor games—how jolly! Shall we have charades? I’m very good at thinking up words.”
“Postman’s Knock is more fun,” said Bullivant.
“How typical of a man to suggest that.”
“Hide and Seek,” said Alix, who loves nothing better than a romp.
“Definitely Hide and Seek,” said Amelia, giving me one of her looks.
I pretended not to have noticed. The previous night’s Hide and Seek hadn’t pleased me much.
I wasn’t allowed to stay silent. “What’s your favorite game, sir?” Amelia demanded.
“Ptarmigan,” I said, “cooked in a rich gravy and covered with pie crust.”
That put a temporary end to the conversation on parlor games.
We started the day’s shoot at the place where we had found Jerry’s body the previous afternoon. Nothing resembling a wraith rose up from the fatal spot; just regular puffs of gunsmoke as the birds were flushed out. It was a good bag and my mood improved. I made a point of walking across to the game cart and admiring the Suffolk Punch who hauled it. He was sporting his brasses in my honor. “Is he as strong as he looks?” I asked the driver. “I sincerely hope so. You’ll have a full load by lunchtime.” And he did, six hundred and seventy-two birds. I know, because I won the sweep to estimate the bag. The day was turning out better than I could have hoped for.
The Chaplain gave us a fright at luncheon by arriving with a companion who turned out to be the district coroner, a cheerful, florid-looking fellow called Elston. They had just come from viewing the gun room where Jerry Gribble’s corpse had been discovered by his own head gamekeeper. To our enormous relief, it emerged that Elston was an old friend of Jerry’s and was satisfied—or willing to be convinced, at any rate—that the death had been accidental. Then Osgot-Edge incautiously asked him, “C-can you tell us about Miss Ch-Ch-”
“Mischance. He means misadventure,” I dexterously cut in. “Is that the verdict in such cases, Mr. Elston?”
“Misadventure? Quite possibly, yes, sir.”
“There you are then, Wilfred. Have some more game pie.” That muzzled Osgot-Edge for the rest of the meal. How imbecilic, to be on the point of mentioning Miss Chimes’s death almost in the same breath as Jerry’s when we had gone to such pains to separate the two fatalities.
I must say, it made me nervous, as well as annoyed. People are so unpredictable. I might have expected someone like Moira Holdfast to make such a gaffe, but I took Osgot-Edge for a man of intelligence. I could only ascribe his lapse to lack of sleep, and he didn’t get my sympathy for that.
All was forgiven by teatime, for that afternoon we increased our bag to over a thousand. Marcus Pelham had arranged for a photographer to record the event, and when we five guns lined up beside the results of our marksmanship you would never have guessed that a cross word had passed between us.
With hearts swelling and heads ringing, we repaired to the house and received the ladies’ congratulations over tea. Certain of them, not least my own dear wife, appeared more excited about the parlor games in prospect than our performance in the field, but we forgave them, for they gave us a splendid welcome and the drawing room hummed with good humor. I wouldn’t want it to be thought that we had forgotten the tragedies of the previous days; we were all in black ties out of respect—the ladies in subdued colors—and most of the blinds were down, but when all’s said and done, you can’t toll the knell twenty-four hours a day.
I picked a chair beside Miss Dundas, who greeted me with an amused curl of the lip as if I were some elderly masher about to inflict myself on her company. I didn’t expect her to spring up and curtsy, but I’m not used to being treated so casually, and I could have found it irksome. Instead it was curiously stimulating.
She didn’t appear to be eating anything, so I recommended the cucumber sandwiches, lowering my voice to add that I really preferred tea seated at a table, rather than having to wait for a parlor maid to pass the plate around the entire room before one saw it again.
She said the way the tea was served was a matter of indifference to her.
“Aren’t you eating at all, then?” I asked. “You’re not tempted by the egg and cress or the salmon?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not unwell, I hope?”
“On the contrary. I feel extremely well. It’s just that I prefer not to eat at this time.”
“Don’t be like Alix,” I warned her, speaking close to her ear. “She hasn’t touched any cooked food since Monday.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Is she ill?”
“Merely careful in view of what happened. She’s surviving on bread rolls and sugar lumps. I don’t know how long she’ll keep it up. Those small macaroons are delicious. Won’t you be tempted?”
“Really, sir, I don’t require one.”
“Yes, but I do. Be an angel and take one for me when the girl comes by.”
A crack appeared in her stony facade; she smiled faintly to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of those snow-white teeth. She collected the macaroon and held it elegantly between finger and thumb whilst I consumed the two I had taken. She will be so much more of a conquest than Amelia, I thought as I chewed.
She asked, “Shall I pass it to you now? Then I can take another when they come round again.”
“Capital. I had no idea you were so resourceful. The great disadvantage of a shooting party is that it deprives us of the ladies’ company for much of the day. How did you spend the morning?”
“Pleasantly enough, sir. Lady Drummond took us on a tour of the house.”
“Did she, indeed? Now I suppose you know all the best places to hide—the priest’s hole, the secret panels.”
She frowned, evidently at a loss to understand me. I said, “The parlor games tonight. Hide and Seek. I shall never find you.”
“Oh. Are we certain to play Hide and Seek?”
“Alix will insist on it. Won’t you tell me where you propose to hide?”
With the slightest tilt of the eyebrows she commented, “Surely that would spoil the game, sir?”
“Not for me, Isabella.”
At the mention of her name a tinge of color sprang to her cheeks. It was the right moment to move on. One needs to judge these encounters with finesse. After all, there was an entire evening to come. I said, “I really must go over and congratulate our hostess on the macaroons. Isabella, you will remember what I said, won’t you? I shall be looking to you for hints.”
After tea and before sunset I took a solitary walk along the drive. Not for exercise or recreation; it was a little obligation that I always put upon myself when visiting a house. In the course of a day I see most of my personal servants, but it’s quite possible to go through the week without once encountering the man from the Household Police entrusted with my safety. Inspector Sweeney was on duty at the Lodge, watching the comings and goings, a dreary task.
He came to the door in his braces, with the smell of fried bacon wafting from behind him. His eyes bulged. “Holy kicker!”
I relished the moment. Sweeney is a limpet. There’s no other word to describe the way he attache
s himself to me whenever I step into a public street. Consequently he is better informed about the intricacies of my private life than anyone else in the kingdom. It was rare—and rather gratifying—to see beneath his shell.
“Your Royal Highness—I thought you were safe in the house.”
“At ease, Mr. Sweeney. I am perfectly safe,” I told him indulgently. “We can afford to relax in the country. I say, have you been cooking?”
“My supper, sir.”
“It smells rather appetizing. I think I’ll step inside.”
I sat warming my hands at the range and watched him finish crisping the bacon, followed by kidneys, tomatoes and potatoes. The Lodge had been put entirely at his disposal during my visit. He was under instructions to remain there except in an emergency. I didn’t want him stumbling through the coverts and startling the game.
“Will that be sufficient, sir?”
“Yes. I shall be eating dinner in an hour. Are you quite certain there’s enough for both of us? I’ll have a rabbit sent up to you if you wish. This is a very toothsome offering, Sweeney. Scrumptious.”
The sharing of food has a curious way of encouraging confidences. I found myself talking about poor Miss Chimes and what happened at dinner on Monday evening.
John Sweeney was wise to everything, of course. I believe he knew all about Jerry’s death as well, but he was tactful enough not to allude to it.
“Does anyone know what killed the young lady, sir?”
“Not yet. We shall have to wait for the postmortem examination.”
“When is that to be, sir?”
“As soon as possible. The coroner will want a report.”
“He was here today, sir, with the Chaplain. I challenged them at the gate.”
“Good man. Yes, they joined us for lunch, half expecting another corpse, I dare say.”
Sweeney grinned and said, “Dying is their living, isn’t that a fact, sir?” Which I thought rather witty, and very Irish.
Half past nine the same evening found me sitting cross-legged on a cushion making a spluttering attempt to smoke a hookah—to the undisguised mirth of the rest of the company, seated around me. On my head was a crimson fez with a tassel.
“Turk,” shouted Bullivant.
“Sultan?” called Alix.
“Wait a minute,” I protested. “We haven’t started yet.” The Chaplain struck some chords on the piano that were meant to suggest Asia Minor, and Amelia Drummond made an astounding entrance. She was dressed (if that is the word) in the authentic costume of a Turkish belly dancer with yashmak, spangled bodice and purple harem trousers. Her feet and ankles were quite bare. She was rattling a tambourine. Our choice of word in the charade had been suggested by Amelia herself, and now I understood why. She must have ordered the outfit specially from a theatrical costumier. She surprised even me and, I think, shocked some of the company as she stood a yard or so in front of me beating the tambourine and shaking her hips in a most vigorous and distracting manner.
“Oh, I say!” cried Lady Moira Holdfast.
“Corking!” said her husband.
Bullivant called out, “Take a look at Bertie. The smoke is coming out of his ears!”
The game was fast getting out of control, so I stood up and said, “Thank you, Rector. That was the first syllable. We shall proceed at once to the second.”
As I ushered Amelia to the door, Bullivant called out, “Encore, if you please!”
What he got instead was Wilfred Osgot-Edge in a solo rendition of the second syllable. Dressed in the suit he had worn for dinner, the poet gave a performance more notable for its understatement than anything else as he paced the room staring at the floor, then got down on hands and knees apparently to examine the carpet. Finally he stood up and stamped his foot.
“Is that all?” asked Marcus.
“Pheasant,” said Miss Dundas.
“I beg your pardon,”
“The answer is pheasant. The first syllable was ‘fez’ and the second ‘ant.’”
Alix clapped. “Oh, Isabella, how clever of you!”
“But you didn’t wait for the whole word,” I protested. “We didn’t act the whole word in one.”
“We got it without that,” Alix pointed out. “Is it correct?”
“Well, yes,” I said grudgingly. I could see she was bent on mischief.
She said, “We don’t want to see the whole word acted now. I think you should pay a forfeit instead. What does everyone else say?”
Forfeits, of course, are immensely popular when someone else has to pay them. I regret to say that parlor games bring out a decidedly cruel tendency in the national character. The British would rather see punishments inflicted than prizes handed out. There were shouts of support from every side, and the Chaplain gleefully rubbed his hands.
George Holdfast had been appointed forfeit master at the start of the evening. We had agreed to pay our dues as we incurred them, rather than all at the end. “Very well,” George said with due severity. “The three of you are to put four chairs in a row, take off your shoes and jump over them.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence.
“George,” protested Lady Moira. “You can’t ask His Royal Highness to do that.”
“Moira, I’ll thank you not to interfere,” said her husband through gritted teeth.
“And you can’t possibly ask a lady to perform acrobatics.
Goaded into a callous remark that I’m sure he regretted later, Holdfast said, “Why not? She’s dressed for it.”
I turned to Amelia. “Well, my dear, it seems that no appeal is possible. Do you think you could do it?”
She shook her head. “I think I’d rather be given another forfeit.”
“Like kissing me?” suggested Bullivant.
“She’d rather jump in the moat,” said Marcus sourly. “Are you going to try, sir?”
“What—kissing your sister?” I said like a shot. “That wouldn’t be a forfeit at all.”
Marcus scowled and turned pink.
“Put out the chairs,” I said, “and let’s see if it’s possible.”
“You have to try,” insisted my loving wife.
Just to look at the four chairs side by side brought me out in gooseflesh. “You’d have to be a kangaroo,” I said.
Then Osgot-Edge spoke up. “I b-b-believe I can do it.”
I could have poleaxed him. This was no time to break ranks. “It seems that we do, after all, have a kangaroo in our midst. Show us how, if you insist,” I said airily.
“C-could we hear the f-forfeit again?”
“With pleasure,” said Holdfast. “You are to put four chairs in a row, take off your shoes and jump over them.”
“I th-thought I heard right.” With that, Osgot-Edge removed his shoes, put them side by side and jumped over them. Over the shoes.
“Oh, bravo, Wilfred!” cried Holdfast. “He saw through it. A trick forfeit!”
Everyone clapped, including the two of us who hadn’t had the wit to guess the catch. Sheepishly, Amelia and I performed the ritual of jumping over the shoes and so paid our dues. I felt extremely peeved that Osgot-Edge—of all people—had bested me.
Lady Moira proposed another round of charades, but she was voted down. After the belly dance, anything at all was going to be an anticlimax.
Alix suggested tentatively that we move on to Hide and Seek.
Marcus Pelham brusquely overruled her. “Spinning the Trencher. Then we can have more forfeits while Amelia changes into something more suitable.”
If looks could kill, three of us would have murdered young Pelham on the spot. Alix was piqued at being ignored; I was angry on her behalf; and Amelia, I’m certain, had intended wearing her Turkish costume for the rest of the evening. But in the interest of social harmony we all s
ubmitted without a murmur. A silver tray was provided and we arranged ourselves in a large circle, taking turns to spin the “trencher” on its edge and call out the name of another player until each of the party had failed to catch it at least once and so incurred a forfeit. By turns we submitted to whatever indignity was demanded until Amelia reappeared wearing her dinner gown,
“Time for a different game, I think,” said Holdfast, and loud support came from every side.
“Hide and Seek?” said Alix.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m parched,” said Pelham, pointedly ignoring her again. “Let’s have something to drink and then see if anyone can think of a decent game to play.” He pulled the bell rope.
His rudeness to Alix had become insupportable. I said in a voice that brooked no interference, “By all means send for the drinks. They will refresh us for the Hide and Seek that we shall play immediately after.”
A silver punch bowl on a trolley was wheeled in. In my time I can fairly claim to have sampled as many punches as a fistfighter, and I’ve learned to treat them warily. When you take a straight brandy at least you know what you are drinking. If someone hands you a cup of warm liquid with strips of orange and lemon floating on the surface, there’s little to distinguish it from the sort of pick-me-up you give an ailing child in the nursery—that is, until it picks you up and throws you through the ceiling.
This particular concoction was heavily based on French brandy, with, I think, additions of white wine and Jamaica rum. I’m willing to concede that there was a hint of calf’s foot jelly in the flavor, and a few leaves of mint lay beguilingly among the orange peel, but it didn’t beguile me. My eyes watered before I put the cup to my lips.
To my surprise two of the ladies drained their cups and put them out for more. Less to my surprise, they became increasingly noisy, not to say tipsy. Which two? Why, the Ladies Amelia Drummond and Moira Holdfast. Alix had put hers aside after a mere sip, and Miss Dundas had asked for water.
Bertie and the Seven Bodies Page 7
