There are almost as many ways of playing Hide and Seek as there are of making punch, so we had to agree to a set of rules. Alix didn’t mind which version we played. I think it was Amelia who gave a bosky smile and suggested Sardines.
George Holdfast looked around in puzzlement. “Sardines?”
“Don’t you know?” said Bullivant, amazed at such ignorance. “Oh, Sardines is quite the most jolly form of Hide and Seek. It has to be played in the dark.”
“Galopshus!” muttered Lady Holdfast.
“One of us has to hide and we all count to ninety-nine and then begin the search. The first to find the hider will quietly join him—or her—in the hiding place. Both must remain as silent as possible. The next to find them squeezes in beside them, and so it goes on until all but one are wedged into the hiding place. Hence the name of the game.”
“And the last pays a forfeit,” cried Amelia. “Let’s turn out the lights and begin.”
Sensibly, Bullivant suggested that we first set some limits, or the game would range over the entire house and none of us would ever find each other. It was agreed to restrict the hiding places to the main rooms downstairs. The kitchens and servants’ quarters were to be out of bounds.
“Splendid. Who shall go first?” said Holdfast.
“I propose Alix,” said Miss Dundas to compensate a little for Pelham’s rudeness.
“That’s very kind,” said Alix, “but I would rather be a seeker the first time.”
Lady Holdfast said in a slurred voice, “One of the gentlemen. It ought to be one of the gentlemen. There are more of you.”
“How about you, Bertie?” said Bullivant.
Before I opened my mouth, Alix scotched that suggestion. “He’s too easy to find. Follow the stale cigar smoke and there he is. We want somebody who’ll test us to the full.”
“Then it must be Wilfred,” Amelia declared. “He’s a wonderfully quiet mover.”
“Don’t we know it,” murmured Marcus Pelham close to my ear, before turning to Osgot-Edge and asking, “Are you game?”
The poet checked that his bow tie was still straight. “If you w-wish.”
“Very well.” Marcus turned to one of the maidservants who had come in to collect the punch bowl and asked her to have the lights turned off. “Better get on your way, Wilfred. We won’t start counting until we’re all in darkness.”
“F-find me if you can, then.” And Osgot-Edge hurried away like the White Rabbit.
“That’s the morning room that way,” young Pelham helpfully informed us. “It leads to the conservatory and the billiard room.”
Holdfast said, “Ah, but he might double back in the dark and go through one of the other doors.”
“He could, too,” said Amelia, sounding quite proud of her poet. “He’s like a panther.”
About three minutes passed after the trolley had been trundled out. Then one of the maids returned and informed us that all the lights had been extinguished except for the drawing room in which we stood. Pelham dismissed her and turned it off himself.
We started counting in unison. When we got to ninety-nine, Pelham shouted, “Coming!”—and we applied ourselves to the hunt.
I’m sure you’ll have gathered, reader, that half the entertainment in the game of Sardines is blundering into other seekers and the other half is squeezing up to the hiders {preferably ladies) after one has found the hiding place. Truth to tell, we weren’t in total darkness as we searched, but it was dark enough to excuse a certain amount of horseplay. Before I had moved a step I found myself entangled with Lady Holdfast. Believe me, this was through no desire on my part. The woman rushed at me like a chimpanzee to its trainer and refused to let go. She was aptly named.
I was trapped in the curve of the grand piano, shocked and winded by the force of the attack. To add to my discomfiture, the shrieks and giggles all around were evidence enough that others were having hijinks whilst I was locked in this unwelcome embrace. I wouldn’t have credited such strength in a lady of Moira Holdfast’s maturity. But she wasn’t content to hug me. She had her hands inside my dinner jacket. “I’m going to tickle you,” she told me, and added, “but you’d better not tickle me.”
Next, I felt my shirtfront tugged out of my trousers and cold fingers on my bare flesh. I flinched at the touch. I quivered. I’m extremely ticklish. I started making hooting sounds.
She said, “I’ve got you at my mercy now.”
Then a voice beside us said, “Is that you, Moira?”
The voice was Sir George Holdfast’s.
Lady Moira hesitated.
I didn’t. I pushed her hands away and dodged clear. Stuffing my shirt back where it belonged, I bolted across the room and collided with someone at the door to the breakfast room. Someone pretty substantial.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Your Royal Highness? Oh, my word, I beg your pardon. After you,” said he, and I recognized the Chaplain’s voice.
“Where have you looked. Rector?” I asked him.
“Behind the curtains in the morning room and in the window seat. He isn’t there, sir.”
“That’s obvious,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be here. I shall search the billiard room.” I groped my way towards a chair and crossed the morning room by passing from one piece of furniture to another. Was it my imagination or did I hear voices ahead?
There was a swishing sound that might have been a curtain being drawn across, or possibly somebody appealing for silence as they heard me approach.
I reached the conservatory—a cold place filled with musty smelling potted plants that had a gray, dead look in the moonlight through the glass roof. I doubted whether anyone would choose such an inhospitable room to hide in, so I moved on, through the door to the billiard room. This was a windowless room, pitch-black.
With my hands probing the space in front of me, I found the table and started feeling my way along its length. Some billiard rooms are equipped with cupboards large enough for several people to hide in, and I proposed to investigate the far end.
There was no need to. I was moving crabwise alongside the billiard table when I felt a touch on my leg.
I said, “God Almighty!”
There were some stifled laughs.
I had found the hiding place. They were under the table. An obvious place to hide, you might be thinking, but allow me to point out that it was extremely clever. If they hadn’t given themselves away by laughing, I would have gone straight past. I couldn’t see anything when I bent to look.
A voice said, “Who is it?”
“Your husband, my dear,” I answered to Alix. “Who else is here?”
“Sh! Someone’s coming.”
I ducked under the table and in so doing found myself intimately close to a lady. I knew she was a lady because my hand came inadvertently to rest on—forgive me—her thigh and I could feel warm flesh through a fabric that was certainly not the cloth of evening trousers. She placed a cool hand over mine and removed it. Her touch was too light for Alix and not warm enough to be Amelia, and Moira Holdfast in her present inebriated state wouldn’t have removed my hand at all.
So she could only be Isabella Dundas.
In the spirit of the game, I edged closer. I got a delicious whiff of some Parisian scent and a sudden jab in the ribs from her bustle, which I was unlucky enough to press against. I gasped.
“Found you!” cried the Chaplain, who had followed me into the billiard room, and was standing beside the table. Just to make sure, he swung his leg and caught my other set of ribs with the point of his shoe.
I protested painfully.
The Chaplain said, “So sorry, whoever you are. I say, is there room under there for a little one?” He scrambled in, bowled me over and practically suffocated me.
Now there was pandemonium. O
thers had heard my shout and dashed into the room, desperate not to be last. Bodies hurled themselves into the hiding place, unaware that like some victim of a medieval torture I was bent backwards over the steel bars of Isabella’s bustle.
I yelled for mercy.
“Somebody’s hurt!” one of the company said superfluously.
“Take care!” said another voice. “It sounds like Bertie.”
They made a united effort to find some space for me and I succeeded in rolling off the metal hump.
“Better?” somebody enquired. People do say asinine things at such times.
I didn’t reply.
I think it was Marcus Pelham who presently observed, “Well, if there’s anyone still trying to find us after that, I’ll eat my hat.”
“Who’s here, then?” asked the Chaplain. “Let’s see. Be so good as to answer your names. Lady Drummond?”
One by one, we answered to the roll call like children in school.
“That’s everyone,” said the Chaplain.
“No,” said Isabella. “You called nine names. There are ten of us.”
“Nine of us and Mr. Osgot-Edge, who was the hider. There was no need to call his name, because he must have been the first here. Isn’t that so, Wilfred?”
There was no response.
“Wilfred?”
“Stop playing games, Wilfred,” said George Holdfast.
“Dammit, we are playing games,” said Pelham testily.
“But we play fair. Speak up, Wilfred. Are you under here?”
“He must be, or what are the rest of us doing?”
Nobody supplied an answer. There was a thoughtful interval of about half a minute.
Then one of the ladies made a sound like a steam engine, and it soon became obvious to all that she was trying to stifle a giggle. She gave up the attempt and laughed out loud.
“Is that you, Amelia?” said Pelham.
Amelia erupted into laughter. “He isn’t here!” she managed to say between shrieks of mirth. “Claude and I were under here first. We wanted a place for a cuddle. Then Alix came along and we had to pretend we were playing the game.” She broke into another peal of laughter. “Wilfred is still hiding somewhere, wondering if anyone will ever find him!”
We had all been well and truly gulled, and now we all joined in the laughter, except, I suppose, for young Pelham, who must have disapproved strongly of his sister’s spooning with Bullivant. Even I shook with laughter and hurt my bruised ribs in the process.
“Come now, let’s all stand up and see if we can do better this time,” the Chaplain exhorted us as if we were at choir practice.
Bullivant said, “I like it here.”
“Saucebox!” said Amelia dotingly. My assessment of her as a flirt was amply justified.
“The Rector is right,” said Holdfast. “Come on, everyone. One of us will have to pay a forfeit, remember.”
There was a distinct reluctance to move. Crushed together as we were, united in the silly error we had made, the party had in some mysterious way attained a feeling of kinship. How odd, that civilized people should become comfortable with each other sitting in the dark under a table—more at ease than they were at dinner, or in the drawing room. If one of us had started to sing, I’m sure we would all have joined in.
However, the game was still on. We turned out to resume the hunt.
“I’m going to look in the library,” said Moira Holdfast.
I rather think that she had said it for my ears, so I resolved to go in the opposite direction. I retraced my way through the conservatory to the breakfast room. Someone was ahead of me—George Holdfast, as it turned out, because I heard his voice presently.
He had stepped across to the food lift and opened the door. I heard him haul on the rope and bring up the dumbwaiter. He sounded pleased with what he discovered there. “By George, here you are!”
If this meant he had found Osgot-Edge I was surprised, not to say shirty. This wasn’t playing fair. There wasn’t space enough inside the dumbwaiter for more than two or three to hide. And it would be far from safe.
Yet as I crossed the room to join them I sensed that something was wrong.
Holdfast spoke in an urgent whisper, “Wake up, Wilfred.” Then, “Oh, Jupiter!”
I was at his side. “What is it?”
He gasped, “Horrible!” Then he grasped my arm. “For pity’s sake, keep the ladies away.”
CHAPTER 9
I struck a match and held it close to the lift, a damp match, it turned out—or perhaps I moistened it with my hot hand—because the flame refused to ignite the wood. It flared for a second and died, but in that brief effulgence it showed me what George Holdfast had discovered. The dumbwaiter contained the hunched, motionless body of Wilfred Osgot-Edge. The handle of a knife jutted from his chest. A thin streak of blood had trickled down his shirt.
Reader, you may think me obtuse, but I hesitated to believe the evidence of my eyes. I suspected a prank. To understand this, you ought to be aware that it pleases me immensely to play practical jokes on my friends, the more elaborate the better. Anyone as expert as I in leg pulling needs no telling that a private house party is a heaven-sent opportunity. One needs to be more than ever on one’s guard against other jokers. So a stabbed man in a dumbwaiter may not be all that he seems. In a bored voice, I said, “Send him down, George.”
“What, sir?”
“The lift. See if you can lower it.”
He obeyed. The mechanism rumbled and squeaked.
I said, “Not all the way down. We don’t want it to reach the kitchen. Stop it halfway.” I struck another match. “Nicely done. Now we shan’t have to turn the ladies away.”
His eyes gleamed like coach lamps. “Didn’t you see the knife, sir? Someone stabbed him.”
“I wouldn’t leap to conclusions if I were you, George.”
“That was real blood, sir. Look at my fingers. Still wet.” It took the evidence of his bloodstained fingers to convince me that what I had just seen was no tomfoolery. Real blood has a smell that any hunting man can recognize. Suddenly the true honor of what we had just seen struck at me like a serpent. My hand twitched and the match went out.
Somewhere behind us, a board creaked.
Holdfast caught his breath.
I muttered to him, “Say nothing.”
“Who’s that?” asked Amelia’s voice. “Who’s cheating? Who’s been lighting matches?” She fairly charged across the floor, caught at my sleeve and giggled. “Got you! It’s Bertie, isn’t it? Let’s feel if you’ve got whiskers.”
“There’s no need.” I struck the next match.
She said, “Two of you! This is all against the rules, you know, two gentlemen collaborating. We ladies are entitled to some help.”
I said grimly, “My dear Lady Drummond, I think we should arrange for you to have a cup of strong black coffee.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She laughed. “Bertie, I’m not drunk, just a little merry, and where’s the harm in that? Besides, we’re in the middle of a game. We haven’t found Wilfred yet.” She gave me a stare. “Have we?”
The black coffee wasn’t required. She sobered up appreciably when I told her what had happened. She said, “What in the name of God are we going to do?”
My brain was temporarily addled. I made a performance of lighting another match in hopes of Holdfast suggesting something, but he was no help at all.
From another room came the coarse, now-incongruous laughter of people still trying to play Sardines. Amelia answered her own question. “First, we must stop this ridiculous game and get the lights on. Oh, Bertie, they’ll be so alarmed.”
Holdfast said, “We ought to fetch the police.”
“My thought exactly,” said I, crossing to the sideboard to a candlestick I had spotted. I man
aged to light it before the match went out. “By Jove, yes, we’d better send for Sweeney. He’ll help to calm things down.”
“Who is Sweeney?”
“My man from the Royal Household Police.”
“I hope he can catch the murderer,” said Holdfast.
At this, Amelia gave a horrified cry, turned away from us and vomited. Happily the jug from which the porridge was served at breakfast was at hand. That it was murder seemed to have eluded our poor, benighted hostess until this moment. One had to be sympathetic. You don’t expect such things to happen under your own roof—least of all when you’re entertaining the Heir Apparent.
Amelia soon learned that my presence in the house was more of an asset than an embarrassment. In the next hour I took command, summoning one of the butlers to restore the gaslight; dispatching a footman to fetch Sweeney from the lodge; calling the guests into the large drawing room and announcing what had happened. There was no point in sparing the ladies’ feelings.
There were gasps of astonishment all round, and Lady Holdfast swooned, or appeared to (she may have succumbed to alcoholic stupor). Calmly and reassuringly I informed them that the matter was already under investigation.
“Might one be so bold as to enquire who is in charge, sir?” asked the Chaplain.
Without pause for thought I answered, “I am.” Then, seeing several jaws drop in surprise, I quietly added, “assisted by Inspector Sweeney, whom you will all meet presently. We shall question everyone in the house and bring this investigation to a speedy conclusion.” Taking care not to look in Alix’s direction, I then stated my own credentials. “I am not without experience in detective investigations.”
“Sir, I hope you’ll question the servants first,” said Bullivant. “You’re not going to find a murderer among present company.”
Lady Holdfast, restored to consciousness, piped up, “I think the policeman should be instructed to protect us, or we shall all be murdered in our beds.”
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