Death of a Cad

∨ Death of a Cad ∧

2

cad. Since 1900, a man devoid of fine instincts or delicate feelings.

—The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang

Jeremy Pomfret decided to have a bath before dinner. He shared a bathroom with Peter Bartlett and it was situated between their two bedrooms.

He threw off his clothes and wrapped his dressing gown around him. He pushed open the bathroom door and stood transfixed. Peter Bartlett was standing with one foot up on the washbasin, scrubbing his toenails. He was a very handsome man, dark and lean, with one of those saturnine faces portrayed on the covers of romances. He had a hard tanned face and a hard tanned body of which Jeremy was able to see quite a lot because the captain had only a small towel tied about his waist.

“I say,” bleated the horrified Jeremy. “That’s my toothbrush you’re using.”

“Oh, is it?” said Peter indifferently. “Give it a good rinse. It’s not as if I’ve got AIDS.”

“Don’t you realize the enormity of what you are doing?” demanded Jeremy in a voice squeaky with outrage. “You’re always pinching a chap’s stuff. Yesterday it was my shaving brush. Now you’re scrubbing your filthy toes with my toothbrush. Haven’t you anything of your own?”

“It’s all somewhere around,” said Peter vaguely. “Met the playwright yet?”

“No, I fell asleep,” said Jeremy crossly, “but I must say – ”

“I know him.”

“How?”

“Met him in London before I rejoined the army. Awful little Commie he was then.”

“I’m sure it was just a pose,” said Jeremy, darting forward and snatching his toothbrush. He looked at it hopelessly and then threw it in the trash bucket.

“In fact,” went on Peter, easing his foot down from the handbasin, “this damned cold dump is crawling with skeletons out of my closet. The only person going to be at this party tomorrow night who I don’t know is the village bobby.”

“What’s he coming for? To guard the silver?”

“No, Priscilla asked him as an honoured guest. Henry told her parents about it before the rapturous welcomes were over, and Halburton-Smythe hit the roof. He sent one of the maids down to the village with a note to the bobby to tell him not to come. Priscilla ups on her hind legs and calls him a snob, Mother joins in, and they were all at it hammer and tongs when I last saw them. But if I know Priscilla, she’ll get her way in the end.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever stayed here,” said Jeremy. He was still smarting over the loss of his toothbrush, but he never had the courage to assert himself over anything. “It’ll be the last. I’ve never stayed anywhere quite so cold before. As soon as I bag my birds, I’ll be off.”

“You might not win,” said Peter, leaning his broad shoulders against the bathroom wall.

Jeremy shrugged. “Clear off, if you’ve finished, old man, and let me have a bath.”

“Righto,” said the captain, opening the door out of the bathroom that led to his room.

Jeremy sighed with relief and advanced on the bath. A grey ring marred its white porcelain sides.

“Dirty sod!” muttered Jeremy in a fury. “Absolute dirty rotter. Complete and utter cad!”

Priscilla put down her hairbrush as she heard a knock at her bedroom door and went to answer it. Henry stood there, smiling apologetically.

“I am sorry, darling,” he said, taking her in his arms, and noticing again with irritation that she was several inches taller than he.

Priscilla extricated herself gently and went and sat down again at the dressing table. “It was a bit thick,” she said. “Did you have to tell them I’d invited Hamish as soon as we got in the door? I told you they wouldn’t like it.”

“Yes, but you haven’t yet told me why you were so bloody damned anxious to ask the bobby in the first place.”

“I like him, that’s all,” said Priscilla crossly. “He’s a human being and that’s more than you can say for most of the guests here. Jessica Villiers and Diana Bryce have never liked me. The Helmsdales are crashing bores. Jeremy’s a twit. I don’t know much about the gallant captain, but it reminds me of that rhyme about knowing two things about the horse, one of them is rather coarse. Prunella and Sir Humphrey are innocent sweeties but hardly strong enough to counteract the rest. Oh, let’s not quarrel about Hamish. He’s not coming and that’s that. Don’t dress for dinner. It’s informal this evening.”

“Kiss me if you don’t want to quarrel.”

Priscilla smiled and turned up her face. He kissed her warmly, and although she seemed rather to enjoy it, her reaction could hardly be called passionate. But it was not sexual desire that had prompted Henry to propose. Priscilla was, to him, all that a future bride should be. He loved his new fame, he loved the money that came with it, and he loved his press image of being the darling of the upper set. The first moment he had set eyes on Priscilla, he had immediately seen her standing on the church steps beside him dressed in white satin and being photographed by every society magazine. She enhanced his image.

“Did you want to ask me something?” asked Priscilla when he had stopped kissing her.

“Yes, there doesn’t seem to be a bath plug, and Mrs Halburton-Smythe told me not to ring for the servants because they don’t have very many and the ones that she has might give notice if they had to run up and down the stairs too much.”

“Where is your room?”

“In the west turret, the one at the front.”

“Oh, that room. The plug in that bathroom was lost ages ago and we keep meaning to get another. But it’s quite simple. It’s a very small plug hole. You just stick your heel in it.”

“Not exactly gracious living.”

“No-one really lives very graciously these days, unless you want masses of foreigners as servants, and Daddy is suspicious of anyone from south of Calais. I must say, you have rather grand ideas for an ex-member of the comrades.”

“I never was a member of the Communist Party.”

“But what about all those early plays of yours? All that class-war stuff.”

“It’s the only way you can get a play put on these days,” said Henry with a tinge of bitterness. “The big theatres only want trash. Only the small left-wing theatres will give the newcomer a chance. You’ve never said anything about Duchess Darling. Did you like it?”

“Yes,” said Priscilla. She had not liked it at all, thinking it silly and trite, but all her other friends had loved it, and Priscilla was so used to being at odds with them in matters of taste, she had begun to distrust her own judgement.

“I’ll give you some of my better stuff to read when we get back to London,” he said eagerly.

He looked down at her with affection, enjoying the cool beauty of her blonde looks. When he received his knighthood, as he was sure he would, she would look regal in the press photographs.

He bent and kissed her again. “I shall go and put my heel in the plug hole. I hope your mama has put us together at dinner.”

“Probably not,” said Priscilla. “But we shall survive.”

Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant, clad only in pink French knickers and transparent bra, was sitting on the end of her bed, painting her toenails scarlet.

Her husband was sitting at the dressing table trying to add some more curl to his large handlebar moustache with his wife’s electric hair curler.

“Your roots are showing,” he said, studying the top of his wife’s bent head in the mirror.

“Well, they’ll just need to show. I once went to the hairdresser here and the girls were so busy gossiping they nearly burned my scalp off. Seen Withering yet?”

“No,” said Freddy Forbes-Grant, “but I’ve seen that rotter, Bartlett.”

“Damn!” Vera’s hand shook suddenly, and the bottle of nail varnish tipped over on the carpet.

“Used to be pretty thick with him, didn’t you?” pursued Freddy.

“Me? Course not. For God’s sake, bring over that bottle of remover and help me clear up this mess.”

“Peter’s here,” said Diana Bryce, flouncing into Jessica Villiers’s room and banging the door behind her.

Jessica had been busy applying blusher to her cheeks. She stopped with the brush in mid-air. “Awkward for you,” she said with an ugly laugh.

“Poor, poor Jessica,” said Diana sweetly. “You will maintain that fiction that Peter ditched me. Everyone knows I ditched him. But you were so crazy about him, poor lamb, you couldn’t believe anyone would want rid of him.”

“Well, I ditched him before he got engaged to you on the rebound,” said Jessica breathlessly.

Diana eyed her with malicious amusement. “Is that the case? I really must tease him about it.”

“And I must tease him about being given the push by you.”

Both girls glared at each other, and then Diana gave a little laugh. “What nonsense we’re talking. Who cares about him anyway? I thought we came to see the playwright.”

“Yes,” said Jessica slowly. “I had almost forgotten.”

Henry Withering enjoyed dinner that evening immensely. He enjoyed the excellent food and the fake baronial dining room, hung with medieval banners that had been made in Birmingham twenty years before, when Colonel Halburton-Smythe had decided to redecorate the castle himself. He thought it was like a stage setting. The Halburton-Smythes did not run to footmen, but there were plenty of efficient Highland maids to serve the cold salmon hors d’oeuvres, followed by roast saddle of venison. There was a stately English butler to pour the wine. Lady Helmsdale, who was seated on Henry’s right, did not once look at Captain Bartlett. Henry was rather sorry for Priscilla, who was at the other end of the table, with Lord Helmsdale on one side and old Sir Humphrey on the other. Henry had at first been wary of the good-looking captain, knowing of old his reputation with women, but in the drawing room before dinner, Priscilla had shown not the slightest flicker of interest in Peter Bartlett. Jessica and Diana had made a dead set at Henry, all very flattering and just as it should be. The fameless years of neglect were gone.

Henry was so busy being happily deafened by Lady Helmsdale’s loud and fulsome compliments that he was unaware of any other conversation at the table.

Mrs Halburton-Smythe was a faded blonde woman with quick, timid movements. She was so often dominated by her husband that she rarely voiced an opinion on anything. She would even have allowed Priscilla to invite that dreadful joke of a policeman if her husband had not been so much against it. But it could be said in Mrs Halburton-Smythe’s favour that she hardly ever listened to gossip, and that was why she had seated Captain Peter Bartlett between Jessica and Diana. Jessica tried to ignore the captain by talking to Jeremy, who was on her other side, while Diana picked at her food and stared sulkily in front of her, wondering what on earth Henry Withering found so fascinating about the terrible Lady Helms-dale.

The captain, who had been drinking steadily, glanced to right and left and announced suddenly, “Well, I must say you two girls make a lousy pair of po-faced dinner companions.”

Jessica shied like a horse and turned her head away. Diana affected not to hear. Opposite the captain, Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant leaned forward. “I’ll entertain you, darling,” she said in her husky whisky voice, “if you don’t think it rude to talk across the table.”

“I’m rather like you, old girl,” slurred the captain. “Anything’s permissible so long as it don’t frighten the horses.”

“Oh, Peter.” Vera gave a nervous laugh. “You’re such a little boy when you try to shock. Do you think you’ll get the first brace?” Word of the bet had already gone around the guests.

“Who knows?” said Peter. “Damned birds have been dying off like flies. ‘S all a Communist plot to ruin sport.”

“What on earth have the Reds got to do with a lot of game birds?” asked Vera.

“I’ll tell you,” said the captain, leaning forward and putting his elbow in the remains of some cauliflower au gratin. “Acid rain.”

“Acid rain?”

“Yes, they take it up frozen, see, in planes, above the moors, and they drop out great chunks of frozen acid rain on the grouse.”

“Oh, I see. They’re stunned to death,” mocked Vera.

“Y’know, Vera,” said the captain, roaring to make himself heard above the boom of Lady Helmsdale’s voice, “you are one very dumb blonde…or would be if you got your roots done. Never seen them so black.”

“There’s no need to get so bloody personal,” snapped Vera.

“What’s the matter?” demanded her husband, Freddy, sharply.

“Peter’s had too much to drink, that’s all,” whispered Vera. “Ignore him.”

But Peter Bartlett had found a new quarry. “Turn the volume down a bit, Agatha,” he shouted suddenly in Lady Helmsdale’s direction. “Can’t hear myself think.”

“You never can,” roared Lady Helmsdale. “Don’t you know it’s because you never think?”

With one of his inexplicable changes of mood the captain sent Lady Helmsdale an amused wink and then turned to Diana, “You are looking very fetching tonight,” he said. “I like that little black number. Suits you.”

Priscilla had met Peter Bartlett before but had never spent more than a few minutes in his company. She was amused to see how the obnoxious captain so easily turned on the charm. Diana was beginning to giggle and blush. Peter then said something across the table to Vera, who looked first startled, then gratified. Then he turned to Jessica and began to whisper in her ear until the frozen look of disapproval left her face and she began to look happy and excited. Priscilla then looked down the table to where Henry was laughing uproariously at something Lady Helmsdale had said.

He really is a pet, thought Priscilla. Mummy and Daddy are so pleased. It’s nice to do the right thing for once. Poor Hamish. I do hope he won’t feel the snub too painfully.

At that moment, Hamish was leaning on his garden gate outside the police station, enjoying the quiet evening. His slavering pet mongrel, Towser, as usual, had flopped down to sleep across his master’s boots. Behind Hamish, from the back of the police station, came the mournful clucking of the hens.

The only thing that worried him was where to find a dinner jacket for the party. He had quickly recovered from the shock of Priscilla’s engagement. Hamish had long ago discovered that it was easier to tuck painful things he could do nothing about at the present away into a far corner of his brain until such time as he could take some action.

He did not know the Halburton-Smythes had written to him not to come. Jessie, their dizzy housemaid, was walking out with Geordie, the baker’s boy, and had met her swain only five yards from the police station. The encounter had made her forget the reason for her having been sent to the village. The housekeeper, Mrs Wilson, had told her to buy a packet of soap powder when she was down in the village, and Jessie remembered only that request. She did not find the note, undelivered, still in her apron pocket until two days later.