Hand in Glove

CHAPTER ONE Mr. Pyke Period

While he waited for the water to boil, Alfred Belt stared absently at the kitchen calendar: with the compliments of the Little Codling garage. Service with a smile. Geo. Copper. Below this legend was a coloured photograph of a kitten in a boot and below that the month of March. Alfred removed them and exposed a coloured photograph of a little girl smirking through apple blossoms.

He warmed a silver teapot engraved on its belly with Mr. Pyke Period’s crest: a fish. He re-folded the Daily Telegraph and placed it on the breakfast tray. The toaster sprang open, the electric kettle shrieked. Alfred made tea, put the toast in a silver rack, transferred bacon and eggs from pan to crested entrée dish, and carried the whole upstairs.

He tapped at his employer’s door and entered. Mr. Pyke Period, a silver-haired bachelor with a fresh complexion, stirred in his bed, gave a little snort, opened his large brown eyes, mumbled his lips, and blushed.

Alfred said: “Good morning, sir.” He placed the tray and turned away, in order that Mr. Period could assume his teeth in privacy. He drew back the curtains. The Village Green looked fresh in the early light. Decorous groups of trees, already burgeoning, showed fragile against distant hills. Woodsmoke rose delicately from several chimneys, and in Miss Cartell’s house, across the Green, her Austrian maid shook a duster out of an upstairs window. In the field beyond, Miss Cartell’s mare grazed peacefully.

“Good morning, Alfred,” Mr. Period responded, now fully articulate.

Alfred drew back the curtains from the side window, exposing a small walled garden, a gardener’s shed, a path, and a gate into a lane. Beyond the gate was a trench, bridged with planks and flanked by piled-up earth. Three labourers had assembled beside it.

“Those chaps still at it in the lane, sir,” said Alfred, returning to the bedside. He placed Mr. Period’s spectacles on his tray and poured his tea.

“Damn’ tedious of them, I must say. However! Good God!” Mr. Period mildly ejaculated. He had opened his paper and was reading the obituary notices. Alfred waited.

“Lord Ormsbury’s gone,” Mr. Period informed him.

“Gone, sir?”

“Died. Yesterday, it seems. Motor accident. Terrible thing. Fifty-two, it gives here. One never knows. ‘Survived by his sister…’ ” He made a small sound of displeasure.

“That would be Désirée, Lady Bantling, sir, wouldn’t it,” Alfred ventured, “at Baynesholme?”

“Exactly, Alfred. Precisely. And what must these fellows do but call her ‘The Dowager’! She hates it. Always has. And not even correct, if it comes to that. One would have expected the Telegraph to know better.” He read on. A preoccupied look, indeed one might almost have said a look of pleasurable anticipation, settled about his rather babyish mouth.

Below, in the garden, a dog began to bark hysterically.

“Good God!” Mr. Period said quietly and closed his eyes.

“I’ll attend to her, sir.”

“I cannot for the life of me see… However!”

“Will there be anything further, sir?" Alfred asked.

“What? No. No, thank you. Miss Cartell for luncheon, you remember. And Miss Maitland-Mayne.”

“Certainly, sir. Arriving by the 10:20. Will there be anything required in the library, sir?”

“I can’t think of anything. She’s bringing her own typewriter.” Mr. Period looked over the top of his paper and appeared to come to a decision. “Her grandfather,” he said, “was General Maitland-Mayne. An old friend of mine.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Ah — yes. Yes. And her father. Killed at Dunkirk. Great loss.”

A padded footfall was heard in the passage. A light tattoo sounded on the door, and a voice, male but pitched rather high, called out: “Bath’s empty. For what it’s worth.” The steps receded.

Mr. Period repeated his sound of irritation.

“Have I or have I not,” he muttered, “taken my bath in the evening for seven uncomfortable weeks?” He glanced at Alfred. “Well, well,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Alfred rejoined and withdrew. As he crossed the landing, he heard Mr. Cartell singing in his bedroom. It won’t answer, Alfred thought, I never supposed it would — and descended to the kitchen. Here he found Mrs. Mitchell, the cook, a big and uninhibited woman. They exchanged routine observations, agreeing that spring really did seem to have come.

“All hotsy-totsy in the upper regions?” Mrs. Mitchell asked.

“As well as can be expected, Mrs. M.”

A shrill yelp modulating into a long-drawn-out howl sounded outside. “That dog!” Mrs. Mitchell said.

Alfred went to the back door and opened it. An enormous half-bred boxer hurled itself against his legs and rushed past him to the kitchen. “Bitch!” Alfred said factually, but with feeling.

“Lay down! Get out of my kitchen! Shoo!” Mrs. Mitchell cried confusedly.

“Here — Pixie!”

The boxer slavered, ogled and threshed its tail.

“Upstairs! Pixie! Up to your master.”

Alfred seized the bitch’s collar and lugged it into the hall. A whistle sounded above. The animal barked joyously, flung itself up the stairs, skating and floundering as it went. Alfred sent a very raw observation after it and returned to the kitchen.

“It’s too much,” he said. “We never bargained for it. Never.”

“I don’t mind a nice cat.”

“Exactly. And the damage it does!”

“Shocking. Your breakfast’s ready, Mr. Belt. New-laid egg.”

“Very nice,” Alfred said.

He sat down to it, a neat dark man with quite an air about him, Mrs. Mitchell considered. She watched him make an incisive stab at the egg. The empty shell splintered and collapsed. Mrs. Mitchell, in a trembling voice, said: “First of April, Mr. B.,” and threw her apron over her face. He was so completely silent that for a moment she thought he must be annoyed. However, when she peeped round her apron, he shook his eggspoon at her.

“You wait,” he threatened. “You just wait, my lady. That’s all.”

“To think of you falling for an old wheeze like that.”

“And I changed the calendar, too.”

“Never mind. There’s the genuine article, look. Under your serviette.”

“Napkin,” Alfred said. He had been in Mr. Period’s service for ten years. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact,” he added, taking the top off his egg, “but April Fool’s Day goes back to pagan times, Mrs. Mitchell.”

“Fancy! With your attainments, I often wonder you don’t look elsewhere for employment.”

“You might say I lack ambition.” Alfred paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “The truth of the matter is,” he added, “I like service. Given favourable circumstances, it suits me. And the circumstances here are — or were — very nice.”

A telephone rang distantly. “I’ll answer it,” Mrs. Mitchell offered. “You take your breakfast in peace.”

She went out. Alfred opened his second egg and his Daily Mail and was immersed in both when she returned.

“Miss Cartell,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Asking for her brother. ’Oh,’ she says. ’Mrs. Mitchell!’ she says. ‘Just the person I wanted to have a word with!’ You know her way. Bluff, but doing the gracious.”

Alfred nodded slightly.

“And she says, ‘I want you,’ she says, ‘before I say anything to my brother, to tell me, absolutely frankly,’ she says, ‘between you and me and the larder shelf, if you think the kweezeen would stand two more for lunch.’ Well!”

“To whom was she referring?”

“To that Miss Moppett and a friend. A gentleman friend, you may depend upon it. Well! Asking me! As far as the kweezeen is concerned, a nice curry can be stretched, as you know yourself, Mr. Belt, to ridiculous lengths.”

“What did you say?”

“ ‘I’m sure, Miss,’ I says — just like that! Straight out! ‘My kitchen,’ I says, ‘has never been found wanting in a crisis,’ I says. And with that I switched her up to his room.”

“Mr. Period,” Alfred said, “will not be pleased.”

“You’re telling me! Can’t stand the young lady, to give her the benefit of the title, and I’m sure I don’t blame him. Mr. Cartell feels the same, you can tell. Well, I mean to say! She’s no relation. Picked up nobody knows where and educated by a spinster sister to act like his niece, which call her, as you may have remarked, Mr. Belt, he will not. A bad girl, if ever I see one, and Miss Cartell will find it out one of these days, you mark my words.”

Alfred laid aside his paper and continued with his breakfast. “It’s the Arrangement,” he said, following out his own thought, “and you can’t get away from it: Separate rooms, with the joint use of the bathroom, and meals to be shared — with the right of either party to invite guests.” He finished his tea. “It doesn’t answer,” he said. “I never thought it would. We’ve been under our own steam too long for sharing. We’re getting fussed. Looking forward to a nice day, with a letter of condolence to be written — Lady Bantling’s brother, for your information, Mrs. M., with whom she has not been on speaking terms these ten years or more — and young lady coming in to help with the book; and now this has to happen. Pity.”

She went to the door and opened it slightly. “Mr. C,” she said with a jerk of her head. “Coming down.”

“His breakfast’s in the dining-room,” said Alfred.

That light tattoo sounded on the door. It opened and Mr. Cartell’s face appeared: thin, anxious and tightly smiling. The dog, Pixie, was at his heels. Alfred and Mrs. Mitchell stood up.

“Oh — ah — good morning, Mrs. Mitchell. ’Morning, Alfred. Just to say that my sister telephoned to ask if we can manage two more. I hope it won’t be too difficult, Mrs. Mitchell, at such short notice.”

“I daresay we’ll manage quite nicely, sir.”

“Shall we? Oh, excellent. Ah — I’ll let Mr. Period know. Good,” said Mr. Cartell. He withdrew his head, shut the door and retired, whistling uncertainly, to the dining-room.

For the second time in half an hour Alfred repeated his leit-motif. “It won’t answer,” he said. “I never thought it would.”

“Sawn-lee,” a hollow voice on the loudspeaker announced. “Sawn-lee. The four carriages in the front portion of the train now arrived at No. 1 platform will proceed to Rimble, Bornlee Green and Little Codling. The rear portion will proceed to Forthamstead and Ribblethorpe. Please make sure you are in the correct part of the train. Sawn-lee. The four carriages...”

Nicola Maitland-Mayne heard this pronouncement with dismay. “But I don’t know,” she cried to her fellow passengers, “which portion I’m in! Is this one of the first four carriages?”

“It’s the fifth,” said the man in the corner. “Next stop Forthamstead.”

“Oh, damn!” Nicola said cheerfully and hauled her typewriter and overcoat down from the rack. Someone opened the doors for her. She plunged out, staggered along the platform, and climbed into another carriage as the voice was saying: “All seats, please, for Rimble, Bornlee Green and Little Codling.”

The first compartment was full and so was the second. She moved along the corridor, looked in at the third, and gave it up.

A tall man, further along the corridor, said: “There’s plenty of room up at the end.”

“I’m Second Class.”

“I should risk it if I were you. You can always pay up if the guard comes along but he never does on this stretch, I promise you.”

“Oh, well,” Nicola said, “I believe I will. Thank you.”

He opened the door of the First Class compartment. She went in and found nobody there. A bowler, an umbrella, and The Times, belonging, she supposed, to the young man himself, lay on one seat She sat on the other. He shut the door and stood in the corridor, his back to her, smoking.

Nicola looked out of the window for a minute or two. Presently she remembered her unfinished crossword, and took her own copy of The Times out of her overcoat pocket.

The train had roared through a cutting and was slowing down for Cabstock when she ejaculated: “Oh, good Lord! Carillon, of course, how stupid!” She looked up to find the young man smiling at her from the opposite seat.

“I stuck over that one, too,” he said.

“How far did you get?”

“All but five. Maddening.”

“So did I,” Nicola said.

“I wonder if they’re the same ones. Shall I look?”

He picked up his paper. She noticed that under the nail of the first finger of his right hand there was a smear of scarlet.

Between them they continued the crossword. It is a matter of conjecture how many complete strangers have been brought into communication by this means. Rimble and Bornlee Green were passed before they filled in the last word.

“I should say,” the young man remarked as he folded up his Times, “that we’re in much the same class.”

“That may be true of crosswords, but it certainly isn’t of railway carriages,” Nicola rejoined. “Heavens, where are we?”

“Coming in to Codling. My station, what a bore!”

“It’s mine too,” Nicola exclaimed, standing up.

“No! Is it really? Jolly good,” said the young man. “I’ll be able to bluff you past the gate. Here we go. Are you putting your coat on? Give me that thing. What is it, a typewriter? Sorry about my unsuitable bowler, but I’m going to a cocktail party this evening. Where’s me brolly? Come on.”

They were the only passengers to leave the train at Little Codling. The sun was shining and the smell of a country lane mingled with the disinfectant-cardboard-and-paste atmosphere of the station. Nicola was only mildly surprised to see her companion produce a Second Class ticket.

“Joy-riding as usual, I suppose, Mr. Bantling,” said the man at the gates.

Nicola gave up her ticket and they passed into the lane. Birds were fussing in the hedgerows, and the air ran freshly. A dilapidated car waited outside, with a mild-looking driver standing beside it.

“Hullo,” the young man said. “There’s the Bloodbath. It must be for you.”

“Do you think so? And why ‘Bloodbath’?”

“Well, they won’t have sent it for me. Good morning, Mr. Copper.”

“Good morning, sir. Would it be Miss Maitland-Mayne?” asked the driver, touching his cap.

Nicola said it would, and he opened the door.

“You’ll take a lift too, sir, I daresay. Mr. Cartell asked me to look out for you.”

“What!” the young man exclaimed, staring at Nicola. “Are you, too, bound for Ye Olde Bachelor’s Lay-by?”

“I’m going to Mr. Pyke Period’s house. Could there be some mistake?”

“Not a bit of it. In we get.”

“Well, if you say so,” Nicola said and they got into the back of the car. It was started up with a good deal of commotion and they set off down the lane. “What did you mean by ‘Bloodbath’?” Nicola repeated.

“You’ll see. I’m going,” the young man shouted, “to visit my stepfather, who is called Mr. Harold Cartell. He shares Mr. Pyke Period’s house.”

“I’m going to type for Mr. Pyke Period.”

“You cast a ray of hope over an otherwise unpropitious venture. Hold very nice and tight, please,” said the young man, imitating a bus conductor. They swung out of the lane, brought up short under the bonnet of a gigantic truck loaded with a crane and drainpipes, and lost their engine. The truck driver blasted his horn. His mate leaned out of the cab. “You got the death-wish, Jack?” he asked the driver.

The driver looked straight ahead of him and restarted his engine. Nicola saw that they had turned into the main street of a village and were headed for the Green.

“Trembling in every limb, are you?” the young man asked her. “Never mind; now you see what I meant by ‘Bloodbath.’ ” He leant towards her. “There is another rather grand taxi in the village,” he confided, “but Pyke Period likes to stick to Mr. Copper, because he’s come down in the world.”

He raised his voice. “That was a damn’ close-run thing, Mr. Copper,” he shouted.

“Think they own the place, those chaps,” the driver rejoined. “Putting the sewer up the side lane by Mr. Period’s house, and what for? Nobody wants it.”

He turned left at the Green, pulled in at a short drive and stopped in front of a smallish Georgian house.

“Here we are,” said the young man.

He got out, extricated Nicola’s typewriter and his own umbrella, and felt in his pocket. Although largish and exceptionally tall, he was expeditious and quick in all his movements.

“Nothing to pay, Mr. Bantling,” said the driver. “Mr. Period gave the order.”

“Oh, well…One for the road, anyway.”

“Very kind of you, but no need, I’m sure. All right, Miss Maitland-Mayne?”

“Quite, thank you,” said Nicola, who had alighted. The car lurched off uproariously. Looking to her right, Nicola could see the crane and the top of its truck over a quickset hedge. She heard the sound of male voices.

The front door had opened and a small dark man in an alpaca coat appeared.

“Good morning, Alfred,” her companion said. “As you see, I’ve brought Miss Maitland-Mayne with me.”

“The gentlemen,” Alfred said, “are expecting you both, sir.”

Pixie shot out of the house in a paroxysm of barking.

“Quiet,” said Alfred, menacing her.

She whined, crouched and then precipitated herself upon Nicola. She stood on her hind legs, slavering and grimacing, and scraped at Nicola with her forepaws.

“Here, you!” said the young man indignantly. “Paws off!”

He cuffed Pixie away and she made loud ambiguous noises.

“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Miss,” said Alfred. “It’s said to be only its fun. This way, if you please, Miss.”

Nicola found herself in a modest but elegantly proportioned hall. It looked like an advertisement from a glossy magazine: Small Georgian residence of character — and, apart from being Georgian, had no other character to speak of.

Alfred opened a door on the right. “In the library, if you please, Miss,” he said. “Mr. Period will be down immediately.”

Nicola walked in. The young man followed and put her typewriter on a table by a window.

“I can’t help wondering,” he said, “what you’re going to do for P.P. After all, he’d never type his letters of condolence, would he?”

“What can you mean?”

“You’ll see. Well, I suppose I’d better launch myself on my ill-fated mission. You might wish me luck.”

Something in his voice caught her attention. She looked up at him. His mouth was screwed dubiously sideways.

“It never does,” he said, “to set one’s heart on something, does it? Furiously, I mean.”

“Good heavens, what a thing to say! Of course, one must. Continuously… Expectation,” said Nicola grandly, “is the springboard of achievement.”

“Rather a phony slogan, I’m afraid.”

“I thought it neat.”

“I should like to confide in you. What a pity we won’t meet over your nice curry. I’m lunching with my mama, who lives in the offing with her third husband.”

“How do you know it’s going to be curry?”

“It often is.”

“Well,” Nicola said, “I wish you luck.”

“Thank you very much.” He smiled at her. “Good typing!”

“Good hunting! If you are hunting.”

He laid his finger against his nose, pulled a mysterious grimace and left her.

Nicola opened up her typewriter and a box of quarto paper and surveyed the library.

It looked out on the drive and the rose garden and it was like the hall in that it had distinction without personality.

Over the fireplace hung a dismal little water colour. Elsewhere on the walls were two sporting prints, a painting of a bewhiskered ensign in the Brigade of Guards pointing his sword at some lightning, and a faded photograph of several Edwardian minor royalties grouped in baleful conviviality about a picnic luncheon. In the darkest corner was a framed genealogical tree, sprouting labels, arms and mantling. There were bookcases with uniform editions, novels, and a copy of Handley Cross. Standing apart from the others, a corps d’élite, were Debrett, Burke, Kelly’s and Who’s Who. The desk itself was rich with photographs, framed in silver. Each bore witness to the conservative technique of the studio and the well-bred restraint of the sitter.

Through the side window, Nicola looked across Mr. Period’s rose garden to a quickset hedge and an iron gate leading into a lane. Beyond this gate was a trench, with planks laid across it, a heap of earth and her old friend the truck — from which, with the aid of its crane, the workmen were unloading drainpipes.

Distantly and overhead, she heard male voices. Her acquaintance of the train (what had the driver called him?) and his stepfather, Nicola supposed.

She was thinking of him with amusement when the door opened and Mr. Pyke Period came in.

He was a tall, elderly man with a marked stoop, silver hair, large brown eyes and a small mouth. He was beautifully dressed, with exactly the correct suggestion of well-worn, scrupulously tended tweed.

He advanced upon Nicola with curved arm held rather high and bent at the wrist. The Foreign Office, or at the very least Commonwealth Relations, were invoked.

“This is really kind of you,” said Mr. Pyke Period, “and awfully lucky for me.”

They shook hands.

“Now, do tell me,” Mr. Period continued, “because I’m the most inquisitive old party, and I’m dying to know — you are Basil’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Nicola, astounded, said that she was.

“Basil Maitland-Mayne?” he gently insisted.

“Yes, but I don’t make much of a to-do about the ‘Maitland,’ ” said Nicola.

“Now, that’s naughty of you. A splendid old family. These things matter.”

“It’s such a mouthful.”

“Never mind! So you’re dear old Basil’s gel! I was sure of it. Such fun for me because, do you know, your grandfather was one of my very dear friends. A bit my senior, but he was one of those soldiers of the old school who never let you feel the gap in ages.”

Nicola, who remembered her grandfather as an arrogant, declamatory old egoist, managed to make a suitable rejoinder. Mr. Period looked at her with his head on one side.

“Now,” he said gaily, “I’m going to confess. Shall we sit down? Do you know, when I called on those perfectly splendid people to ask about typewriting and they gave me some names from their books, I positively leapt at yours. And do you know why?”

Nicola had her suspicions and they made her feel uncomfortable. But there was something about Mr. Period — what was it? — something vulnerable and foolish, that aroused her compassion. She knew she was meant to smile and shake her head and she did both.

Mr. Period said, sitting youthfully on the arm of a leather chair: “It was because I felt that we would be working together on — dear me, too difficult! — on a common ground. Talking the same language.” He waited for a moment and then said cozily: “And now you know all about me. I’m the most dreadful old anachronism — a Period piece, in fact.”

As Nicola responded to this joke she couldn’t help wondering how often Mr. Period had made it.

He laughed delightedly with her. “So, speaking as one snob to another,” he ended, “I couldn’t be more enchanted that you are you. Well, never mind! One’s meant not to say such things in these egalitarian days.”

He had a conspiratorial way of biting his underlip and lifting his shoulders: it was indescribably arch. “But we mustn’t be naughty,” said Mr. Pyke Period.

Nicola said: “They didn’t really explain at the agency exactly what my job is to be.”

“Ah! Because they didn’t exactly know. I was coming to that.”

It took him some time to come to it, though, because he would dodge about among innumerable parentheses. Finally, however, it emerged that he was writing a book. He had been approached by the head of a publishing firm.

“Wonderful,” Nicola said, “actually to be asked by a publisher to write.”

He laughed. “My dear child, I promise you it would never have come from me. Indeed, I thought he must be pulling my leg. But not at all. So in the end I madly consented and — and there we are, you know.”

“Your memoirs, perhaps?” Nicola ventured.

“No. No, although I must say — but no. You’ll never guess!”

She felt that she never would, and waited.

“It’s — how can I explain? Don’t laugh! It’s just that in these extraordinary times there are all sorts of people popping up in places where one would least expect to find them: clever, successful people, we must admit, but not — as we old fogies used to say — ‘not quite-quite.’ And there they find themselves in a milieu where they really are, poor darlings, at a grievous loss.”

And there it was: Mr. Pyke Period had been commissioned to write a book on etiquette. Nicola suspected that his publisher had displayed a remarkably shrewd judgment. The only book on etiquette she had ever read, a Victorian work unearthed in an attic by her brother, had been a favourite source for ribald quotation. “ ‘It is a mark of ill-breeding in a lady,’ ” Nicola’s brother would remind her, “ ‘to look over her shoulder, still more behind her, when walking abroad.’ ”

“ ‘There should be no diminution of courteous observance,’ ” she would counter, “ ‘in the family circle. A brother will always rise when his sister enters the drawing-room and open the door to her when she shows her intention of quitting it.’ ”

“ ‘While on the sister’s part some slight acknowledgment of his action will be made: a smile or a quiet ‘Thank you’ will indicate her awareness of the little attention.’ ”

Almost as if he had read her thoughts, Mr. Period was saying: “Of course, one knows all about these delicious Victorian offerings — quite wonderful. And there have been contemporaries: poor Félicité Sankie-Bond, after their crash, don’t you know, and one mustn’t overlap with dear Nancy. Very diffy. In the meantime…”

In the meantime, it at last transpired, Nicola was to make a typewritten draft of his notes and assemble them under their appropriate headings. These were: “The Ball-Dance,” “Trifles That Matter,” “The Small Dinner,” “The Partie Carré,” “Addressing Our Letters & Betters,” “Awkwiddities,” “The Debutante — Lunching and Launching,” “Tips on Tipping.”

And, bulkily, in a separate compartment, “The Compleat Letter-Writer.”

She was soon to learn that letter-writing was a great matter with Mr. Pyke Period. He was, in fact, famous for his letters of condolence.

They settled to work: Nicola at her table near the front French windows, Mr. Period at his desk in the side one.

Her job was an exacting one. Mr. Period evidently jotted down his thoughts piecemeal, as they had come to him, and it was often difficult to know where a passage precisely belonged. “Never fold the napkin (there is no need, I feel sure, to put the unspeakable ‘serviette’ in its place), but drop it lightly on the table.” Nicola listed this under “Table Manners,” and wondered if Mr. Period would find the phrase “refeened,” a word he often used with humorous intent.

She looked up to find him in a trance, his pen suspended, his gaze rapt, a sheet of headed letter-paper under his hand. He caught her glance, and said: “A few lines to my dear Désirée Bantling. Soi-disante. The Dowager, as the Telegraph would call her. You saw Ormsbury had gone, I daresay?”

Nicola, who had no idea whether the Dowager Lady Bantling had been deserted or bereaved, said: “No, I didn’t see it.”

“Letters of condolence!” Mr. Period sighed with a faint hint of complacency. “How difficult they are!” He began to write again, quite rapidly, with sidelong references to his note-pad.

Upstairs a voice, clearly recognizable, shouted angrily: “. . and all I can say, you horrible little man, is I’m bloody sorry I ever asked you.” Someone came rapidly downstairs and crossed the hall. The front door slammed. Through her window, Nicola saw her travelling companion, scarlet in the face, stride down the drive, angrily swinging his bowler.

He’s forgotten his umbrella, she thought.

“Oh, dear!” Mr. Period murmured. “An awkwiddity, I fear me. Andrew in one of his rages. You know him, of course.”

“Not till this morning.”

“Andrew Bantling? My dear, he’s the son of the very Lady Bantling we were talking about. Désirée, you know. Ormsbury’s sister. Bobo Bantling — Andrew’s papa — was the first of her three husbands. The senior branch. Seventh Baron. Succeeded to the peerage…” Here followed inevitably one of Mr. Period’s classy genealogical digressions. “My dear Nicola—” he went on, “I hope, by the way, I may so far take advantage of a family friendship?”

“Please do.”

“Sweet of you. Well, my dear Nicola, you will have gathered that I don’t vegetate all by myself in this house. No. I share. With an old friend who is called Harold Cartell. It’s a new arrangement and I hope it’s going to suit us both. Harold is Andrew’s stepfather and guardian. He is, by the way, a retired solicitor. I don’t need to tell you about Andrew’s mum,” Mr. Period added, strangely adopting the current slang. “She, poor darling, is almost too famous.”

“And she’s called Désirée, Lady Bantling?”

“She naughtily sticks to the title in the teeth of the most surprising remarriage.”

“Then she’s really Mrs. Harold Cartell?”

“Not now. That hardly lasted any time. No. She’s now Mrs. Bimbo Dodds. Bantling… Cartell… Dodds. In that order.”

“Yes, of course,” Nicola said, remembering at last the singular fame of this lady.

“Yes. ’Nuff said,” Mr. Period observed, wanly arch, “under that heading. But Hal Cartell was Lord Bantling’s solicitor and executor and is the trustee for Andrew’s inheritance. I, by the way, am the other trustee, and I do hope that’s not going to be diffy. Well, now,” Mr. Period went cozily on, “on Bantling’s death, Hal Cartell was also appointed Andrew’s guardian. Désirée, at that time, was going through a rather farouche phase, and Andrew narrowly escaped being made a Ward-in-Chancery. Thus it was that Hal Cartell was thrown in the widow’s path. She rather wolfed him up, don’t you know? Black always suited her. But they were too dismally incompatible. However… Harold remained, nevertheless, Andrew’s guardian and trustee for the estate. Andrew doesn’t come into it until he’s twenty-five-in six months’ time, by the way. He’s in the Brigade of Guards, as you’ll have seen, but I gather he wants to leave in order to paint, which is so unexpected. Indeed, that may be this morning’s problem. A great pity. All the Bantlings have been in the Brigade. And if he must paint, poor dear, why not as a hobby? What his father would have said …!” Mr. Period waved his hands.

“But why isn’t he Lord Bantling?”

“His father was a widower with one son when he married Désirée. That son, of course, succeeded.”

“Oh, I see,” Nicola said politely. “Of course.”

“You wonder why I go into all these begatteries, as I call them. Partly because they amuse me and partly because you will, I hope, be seeing quite a lot of my stodgy little household and, in so far as Hal Cartell is one of us, we — ah — we overlap. In fact,” Mr. Period went on, looking vexed, “we overlap at luncheon. Harold’s sister, Connie Cartell, who is our neighbour, joins us. With — ah — with a protégée, a—soi-disante ‘niece,’ adopted from goodness knows where. Her name is Mary Ralston and her nickname, an inappropriate one, is ‘Moppett.’ I understand that she brings a friend with her. However! To return to Désirée. Désirée and her Bimbo spend a lot of time at the dower house, Baynesholme, which is only a mile or two away from us. I believe Andrew lunches there today. His mother was to pick him up here, and I do hope he hasn’t gone flouncing back to London: it would be too awkward and tiresome of him, poor boy.”

“Then Mrs. Dodds — I mean Lady Bantling — and Mr. Cartell still…?”

“Oh, Lord, yes! They hob-nob occasionally. Désirée never bears grudges. She’s a remarkable person. I dote on her, but she is rather a law unto herself. For instance, one doesn’t know in the very least how she’ll react to the death of Ormsbury. Brother though he is. Better, I think, not to mention it when she comes, but simply to write. But there, I really mustn’t bore you with all my dim little bits of gossip. To work, my child! To work!”

They returned to their respective tasks. Nicola had made some headway with the notes when she came upon one which was evidently a rough draft for a letter. “My dear—” it began — “What can I say? Only that you have lost a wonderful…” — here Mr. Period had left a blank space — “and a most valued and very dear old friend.” It continued in this vein with many erasures. Should she file it under “The Compleat Letter-Writer”? Was it in fact intended as an exemplar?

She laid it before Mr. Period.

“I’m not quite sure if this belongs.”

He looked at it and turned pink. “No, no. Stupid of me. Thank you.”

He pushed it under his pad, and folded the letter he had written, whistling under his breath. “That’s that,” he said, with rather forced airiness. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to post it in the village.”

Nicola made a note of it and returned to her task. She became aware of suppressed nervousness in her employer. They went through the absurd pantomime of catching each other’s eyes and pretending they had done nothing of the sort. This had occurred two or three times when Nicola said: “I’m so sorry. I’ve got the awful trick of staring at people when I’m trying to concentrate.”

“My dear child! No! It is I who am at fault. In point of fact,” Mr. Period went on with a faint simper, “I’ve been asking myself if I dare confide a little problem.”

Not knowing what to say, Nicola said nothing. Mr. Period, with an air of hardihood, continued. He waved his hand.

“It’s nothing. Rather a bore, really. Just that the — ah — the publishers are going to do something quite handsome in the way of illustrations and they — don’t laugh — they want my old mug for their frontispiece. A portrait rather than a photograph is thought to be appropriate and, I can’t imagine why, they took it for granted one had been done, do you know? And one hasn’t.”

“What a pity,” Nicola sympathized. “So it will have to be a photograph.”

“Ah! Yes. That was my first thought. But then, you see — They made such a point of it — and I did just wonder — My friends, silly creatures, urge me to it. Just a line drawing. One doesn’t know what to think.”

It was clear to Nicola that Mr. Period was dying to have his portrait done and was prepared to pay highly for it. He mentioned several extremely fashionable artists and then said suddenly: “It’s naughty of dear Agatha Troy to be so diffy about who she does. She said something about not wanting to abandon bone for bacon, I think, when she refused — she actually refused to paint…”

Here Mr. Period whispered an extremely potent name and stared with a sort of dismal triumph at Nicola. “So she wouldn’t dream of poor old me,” he cried. “ ’Nuff said!”

Nicola began to say, “I wonder, though. She often—” and hurriedly checked herself. She had been about to commit an indiscretion. Fortunately, Mr. Period’s attention was diverted by the return of Andrew Bantling. He had reappeared in the drive, still walking fast and swinging his bowler, and with a fixed expression on his pleasantly bony face.

“He has come back,” Nicola said.

“Andrew? Oh, good. I wonder what for.”

In a moment they found out. The door opened and Andrew looked in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said loudly, “but if it’s not too troublesome, I wonder if I could have a word with you, P.P.?”

“My dear boy! But, of course.”

“It’s not private from Nicola,” Andrew said. “On the contrary. At the same time, I don’t want to bore anybody.”

Mr. Period said playfully: “I myself have done nothing but bore poor Nicola. Shall we ‘withdraw to the withdrawing-room’ and leave her in peace?”

“Oh. All right. Thank you. Sorry.” Andrew threw a distracted look at Nicola and opened the door.

Mr. Period made her a little bow. “You will excuse us, my dear?” he said, and they went out.

Nicola worked on steadily and was only once interrupted. The door opened to admit a small, thin, querulous-looking gentleman who ejaculated: “I beg your pardon. Damn!” and went out again. Mr. Cartell, no doubt.

At eleven o’clock Alfred came in with sherry and biscuits and Mr. Period’s compliments. If she was in any difficulty would she be good enough to ring and Alfred would convey the message. Nicola was not in any difficulty, but while she enjoyed her sherry she found herself scribbling absent-mindedly.

Good Lord! she thought. Why did I do that? A bit longer on this job and I’ll be turning into a Pyke Period myself.

Two hours went by. The house was very quiet. She was half-aware of small local activities: distant voices and movement, the rattle and throb of machinery in the lane. She thought from time to time of her employer. To which brand of snobbery, that overworked but always enthralling subject, did Mr. Pyke Period belong? Was he simply a snob of the traditional school who dearly loves a lord? Was he himself a scion of incredibly ancient lineage — one of those old, uncelebrated families whose sole claim to distinction rests in their refusal to accept a title? No. That didn’t quite fit Mr. Period. It wasn’t easy to imagine him refusing a title, and yet…

Her attention was again diverted to the drive. Three persons approached the house, barked at and harassed by Pixie. A large, tweedy middle-aged woman, with a red face, a squashed hat and a walking stick, was followed by a pale girl with a fashionable coiffure and a young man who looked, Nicola thought, quite awful. These two lagged behind their elder, who shouted and pointed with her stick in the direction of the excavations. Nicola could hear her voice, which sounded arrogant, and her gusts of boisterous laughter. While her back was turned, the girl quickly planted an extremely uninhibited kiss on the young man’s mouth.

That, thought Nicola, is a full-treatment job.

Pixie floundered against the young man and he kicked her rapidly in the ribs. She emitted a howl and retired. The large woman looked round in concern, but the young man was smiling damply. They moved round the corner of the house. Through the side window Nicola could see them inspecting the excavations. They returned to the drive.

Footsteps crossed the hall. Doors were opened. Mr. Cartell appeared in the drive and was greeted by the lady — who, Nicola saw, resembled him in a robust fashion. The sister, Nicola thought. Connie. And the adopted niece, Moppett, and the niece’s frightful friend. I don’t wonder Mr. Period was put out.

They moved out of sight. There was a burst of conversation in the hall, in which Mr. Period’s voice could be heard, and a withdrawal (into the “with-drawing-room,” no doubt). Presently Andrew Bantling came into the library.

“Hullo,” he said. “I’m to bid you to drinks. I don’t mind telling you it’s a bum party. My bloody-minded stepfather, to whom I’m not speaking, his bully of a sister, her ghastly adopted what-not, and an unspeakable chum. Come on.”

“Do you think I might be excused and just creep in to lunch?”

“Not a hope. P.P. would be as cross as two sticks. He’s telling them all about you and how lucky he is to have you.”

“I don’t want a drink. I’ve been built up with sherry.”

“There’s tomato juice. Do come. You’d better.”

“In that case…” Nicola said, and put the cover on her typewriter.

“That’s right,” he said, and took her arm. “I’ve had such a stinker of a morning — you can’t think. How have you got on?”

“I hope, all right.”

“Is he writing a book?”

“I’m a confidential typist.”

“My face can’t get any redder than it’s been already,” Andrew said and ushered her into the hall. “Are you at all interested in painting?”

“Yes. You paint, don’t you?”

“How the hell did you know?”

“Your first fingernail. And anyway Mr. Period told me.”

“Talk, talk, talk!” Andrew said, but he smiled at her. “And what a sharp girl you are, to be sure. Oh, calamity, look who’s here!”

Alfred was at the front door, showing in a startling lady with tangerine hair, enormous eyes, pale orange lips and a general air of good-humoured raffishness. She was followed by an unremarkable, cagey-looking man, very much her junior.

“Hullo, Mum!” Andrew said. “Hullo, Bimbo.”

“Darling!” said Désirée Dodds or Lady Bantling. “How lovely!”

“Hi,” said her husband, Bimbo.

Nicola was introduced and they all went into the drawing-room.

Here Nicola encountered the group of persons with whom, on one hand disastrously and on the other to her greatest joy, she was about to become inextricably involved.