Tied Up in Tinsel

Two — Christmas Eve

Before they went to bed they listened to the regional weather report. It said that snow was expected to fall through the night and into Christmas Eve but that it was unlikely to continue until Christmas Day itself. A warm front was approaching over the Atlantic Ocean.

“I always think,” Hilary remarked, “of a warm front as belonging to a décolleté Regency lady thrusting her opulent prow, as it were, into some consequential rout or ball and warming it up no end. The ball, I mean.”

“No doubt,” his aunt tartly rejoined, “Cressida will fulfil that questionable role at the coming function.”

“Well, you know, darling, I rather think she may,” said Hilary and kissed his aunt good-night.

When Troy hung her red dress in her wardrobe that night she discovered that the recess in which it had been built must be flanked by a similar recess in the Forresters’ room so that the ancient wall that separated them had been, in this section, removed, and a thin partition separated their respective hanging cupboards.

Mrs. Forrester, at this very moment, was evidently disposing of her own garments. Troy could hear the scrape of coat hangers on the rail. She jumped violently when her own name was shouted, almost, as it seemed, into her ear.

“Troy! Odd sort of Christian name.”

Distantly, Colonel Forrester could be heard to say: “… no… understand… famous…” His head, Troy thought was momentarily engulfed in some garment. Mrs. Forrester sounded extremely cross.

“You know what I think about it,” she shouted and rattled the coat hangers, “I said you know…”

Troy, reprehensibly, was riveted in her wardrobe.

“… don’t trust…” continued the voice. “Never have. You know that.” A pause and a final shout: “… sooner it was left straight out to the murderers. Now!” A final angry clash of coat hangers and a bang of wardrobe doors.

Troy went to bed in a daze but whether this condition was engendered by the Lucullan dinner Hilary and Kittiwee had provided or by the juxtaposition of unusual circumstances in which she found herself, she was quite unable to determine.

She had thought she was sleepy when she got into bed, but now she lay awake, listening to small noises made by the fire in her grate as it settled into glowing oblivion and to faint sighs and occasional buffets of the nightwind outside. “Well,” Troy thought, “this is a rum go and no mistake.”

After a period of disjointed but sharp reflections she began to fancy she heard voices somewhere out in the dark. “I must be dozing, after all,” Troy thought but knew that it was not so. A gust of wind rumbled in the chimney, followed by a silence into which there intruded the wraith of a voice, belonging nowhere and diminished as if the sound had been turned off in a television dialogue and only the ghost of itself remained.

Now, positively, it was out there below her window: a man’s voice — two voices — engaged in indistinguishable talk.

Troy got out of bed and, by the glow from her dying fire, went to her window and parted the curtains.

It was not as dark as she had expected. She looked out at a subject that might have inspired Jane Eyre to add another item to her portfolio. A rift had been blown in the clouds and the moon in its last quarter shone on a morbid-looking prospect of black shadows thrown across cadaverous passages of snow. In the background rose the moors and in the foreground, the shambles of broken glass beneath her window. Beyond this jogged two torchlights, the first of which cast a yellow circle on a white ground. The second bobbed about the side of a large wooden crate with the legend: “Musical instrument. Handle with Extreme Care,” stencilled across it. It seemed to be mounted on some kind of vehicle, a sledge, perhaps, since it made no noise.

The two men wore hooded oilskins that glinted as they moved. The leader gesticulated and pointed and then turned and leant into the wind. Troy saw that he had some kind of tow-rope over his shoulder. The second man placed his muffled hands against the rear end of the crate and braced himself. He tilted his head sideways and glanced up. For a moment she caught sight of his face. It was Nigel.

Although Troy had only had one look at Vincent, the nonpoisoner-chauffeur-gardener, and that look from the top of a hill, she felt sure that the leader was he.

“Hup!” cried the disembodied voice and the ridiculous outfit moved off round the east wing in the direction of the main courtyard of Halberds. The moon was overrun by clouds.

Before she got back into bed Troy looked at a little Sèvres clock on her chimney-piece. She was greatly surprised to find that the hour was no later than ten past twelve.

At last she fell asleep and woke to the sound of opening curtains. A general pale glare was admitted.

“Good-morning, Nigel,” said Troy.

“Good-morning,” Nigel muttered, “madam.”

With downcast eyes he placed her morning tea tray at her bedside.

“Has there been a heavy fall of snow?”

“Not to say heavy,” he sighed, moving towards the door.

Troy said boldly, “It was coming down quite hard last night, wasn’t it? You must have been frozen pulling that sledge.”

He stopped. For the first time he lifted his gaze to her face. His almost colourless eyes stared through their white lashes like a doll’s.

“I happened to look out,” Troy explained, and wondered why on earth she should feel frightened.

He stood motionless for a few seconds and then said “Yes?” and moved to the door. Like an actor timing an exit line he added, “It’s a surprise,” and left her.

The nature of the surprise became evident when Troy went down to breakfast.

A moderate snowfall had wrought its conventional change in a landscape that glittered in the thin sunshine. The moors had become interfolding arcs of white and blue, the trees wore their epaulettes with an obsequious air of conformity, and the area under treatment by tractors was simplified as if a white dustsheet had been dropped over it.

The breakfast-room was in the east wing of Halberds. It opened off a passage that terminated in a door into the adjoining library. The library itself, being the foremost room of the east wing, commanded views on three sides.

Troy wanted to have a stare at her work. She went into the library and glowered at the portrait for some minutes, biting her thumb. Then she looked out of the windows that gave on to the courtyard. Here, already masked in snow and placed at dead centre, was a large rectangular object that Troy had no difficulty in recognizing since the stencilled legend on its side was not as yet obliterated.

And there, busy as ever, were Vincent and Nigel, shovelling snow from wheelbarrows and packing it round the case in the form of a flanking series of steps based on an under-structure of boxes and planks. Troy watched them for a moment or two and then went to the breakfast-room.

Hilary stood in the window supping porridge. He was alone.

“Hullo, hullo!” he cried. “Have you seen the work in progress? Isn’t it exciting: the creative urge in full spate. Nigel has been inspired. I am so pleased, you can’t think.”

“What are they making?”

“A reproduction of my many-times-great-grandfather’s tomb. I’ve given Nigel photographs and of course he’s seen the original. It’s a compliment and I couldn’t be more gratified. Such a change from waxworks and horses for roundabouts. The crate will represent the catafalque, you see, and the recumbent figure will be life-size. Really it’s extraordinarily nice of Nigel.”

“I saw them towing the crate round the house at midnight.”

“It appears he was suddenly inspired and roused Vincent up to assist him. The top of the crate was already beautifully covered by snow this morning. It’s so good for Nigel to become creative again. Rejoice with me and have some kedgeree or something. Don’t you adore having things to look forward to?”

Colonel and Mrs. Forrester came in wearing that air of spurious domesticity peculiar to guests in a country house. The Colonel was enchanted by Nigel’s activities and raved about them while his porridge congealed in its bowl. His wife recalled him to himself.

“I daresay,” she said with a baleful glance at Hilary, “it keeps them out of mischief.” Troy was unable to determine what Mrs. Forrester really thought about Hilary’s experiment with murderers.

“Cressida and Uncle Bert,” said Hilary, “are coming by the 3:30 at Downlow. I’m going to meet them unless, of course, I’m required in the library.”

“Not if I may have a sitting this morning,” said Troy.

“The light will have changed, won’t it? Because of the snow?”

“I expect it will. We’ll just have to see.”

“What sort of portraits do you paint?” Mrs. Forrester demanded.

“Extremely good ones,” said her nephew pretty tartly. “You’re in distinguished company, Aunt Bedelia.”

To Troy’s intense amusement Mrs. Forrester pulled a long, droll face and immediately afterwards tipped her a wink.

“Hoity-toity,” she said.

“Not at all,” Hilary huffily rejoined.

Troy said, “It’s hopeless asking what sort of things I paint because I’m no good at talking about my work. If you drive me into a corner I’ll come out with the most awful jabber-wocky.”

And in a state of astonishment at herself Troy added like a shamefaced schoolgirl, “One paints as one must.”

After a considerable pause Hilary said: “How generous you are.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Troy contradicted.

“Well!” Mrs. Forrester said. “We shall see what we shall see.”

Hilary snorted.

“I did some watercolours,” Colonel Forrester remembered, “when I was at Eton. They weren’t very good but I did them, at least.”

“That was something,” his wife conceded, and Troy found herself adding that you couldn’t say fairer than that.

They finished their breakfast in comparative silence and were about to leave the table when Blore came in and bent over Hilary in a manner that recalled his own past as a headwaiter.

“Yes, Blore,” Hilary asked, “what is it?”

“The mistletoe, sir. It will be on the 3:30 and the person wonders if it could be collected at the station.”

“I’ll collect it. It’s for the kissing bough. Ask Vincent to have everything ready, will you?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Good.”

Hilary rubbed his hands with an exhilarated air and proposed to Troy that they resume their sittings. When the session was concluded, they went out into the sparkling morning to see how Nigel was getting on with his effigy.

It had advanced. The recumbent figure of a sixteenth-century Bill-Tasman was taking shape. Nigel’s mittened hands worked quickly. He slapped on fistfuls of snow and manipulated them into shape with a wooden spatula: a kitchen implement, Troy supposed. There was something frenetic in his devotion to his task. He didn’t so much as glance at his audience. Slap, slap, scoop, scoop, he went.

And now, for the first time, Troy encountered Cooke, the cook, nicknamed Kittiwee.

He had come out-of-doors wearing his professional hat, checked trousers and snowy apron with an overcoat slung rather stylishly over his shoulders. He carried an enormous ladle and looked, Troy thought, as if he had materialized from a Happy Families playing card. Indeed, his round face, large eyes and wide mouth were comically in accord with such a notion.

When he saw Troy and Hilary he beamed upon them and raised a plump hand to his starched hat.

“Good morning, sir,” said Kittiwee. “Good morning, ladies.”

“ ’Morning, Cooke,” Hilary rejoined. “Come out to lend a hand with the icing?”

Kittiwee laughed consumedly at this mildest of jokelets. “Indeed, no sir,” he protested. “I wouldn’t dare. I just thought a ladle might assist the artist.”

Nigel thus indirectly appealed to merely shook his head without pausing in his task.

“All going well in your department?” Hilary asked.

“Yes, thank you, sir. We’re doing nicely. The Boy from Downlow is ever such a bright lad.”

“Oh. Good. Good,” Hilary said, rather hurriedly, Troy thought. “What about the mince pies?”

“Ready for nibbles and wishes immediately after tea, sir, if you please,” cried Kittiwee, gaily.

“If they are on the same level as the other things you’ve been giving us to eat,” Troy said, “they’ll be the mince pies of the century.”

It was hard to say who was the more delighted by this eulogy, Hilary or his cook.

Vincent came round the east wing wheeling another bar-rowful of snow. At close quarters he turned out to be a swarthy, thin man with a haggard expression in his eyes. He looked sidelong at Troy, tipped out his load, and trundled off again. Kittiwee, explaining that he had only popped out for one second, embraced them all in the very widest of dimpled smiles and retired into the house.

A few minutes later Blore came into the courtyard and boomingly proclaimed that luncheon was served.

Cressida Tottenham was blond and extremely elegant. She was so elegant that her beauty seemed to be a second consideration: a kind of bonus, a gloss. She wore a sable hat. Sable framed her face, hung from her sleeves, and topped her boots. When her outer garments were removed she appeared to be gloved rather than clad in the very ultimate of expensive simplicity.

Her eyes and her mouth slanted and she carried her head a little on one side. She was very composed and not loquacious. When she did talk she said “you know” with every second breath. She was not by any means the kind of subject that Troy liked to paint. This might turn out to be awkward: Hilary kept looking inquisitively at her as if to ask what she thought of Cressida.

To Mr. Bert Smith, Troy took an instant fancy. He was a little old man with an impertinent face, a bright eye and a strong out-of-date cockney habit of speech. He was smartly dressed in an aggressive countrified way. Troy judged him to be about seventy years old and in excellent health.

The encounter between the new arrivals and the Forresters was interesting. Colonel Forrester greeted Miss Tottenham with timid admiration, calling her “Cressy dear.”

Troy thought she detected a gently avuncular air, tempered perhaps by anxiety. The Colonel’s meeting with Mr. Smith was cordial to a degree. He shook hands with abandon. “How are you? How are you, my dear fellow?” he repeatedly asked and with each inquiry broke into delighted laughter.

“How’s the Colonel, anyway?” Mr. Smith responded. “You’re looking lovely, I’ll say that for you. Fair caution, you are, and no error. What’s all this they’re givin’ us abaht you dressing yourself up like Good King Thingummy? Wiv whiskers! Whiskers!” Mr. Smith turned upon Mrs. Forrester and suddenly bellowed: “Blimey, ’e must be joking — at ’is age! Whiskers?’

“It’s my husband who’s deaf, Smith,” Mrs. Forrester pointed out, “not me. You’ve made that mistake before, you know.”

“What am I thinking of,” said Mr. Smith, winking at Troy and slapping Colonel Forrester on the back. “Slip of the tongue, as the butcher said when he dropped it accidental in the tripe.”

“Uncle Bert,” Hilary said to Troy., “is a comedian manqué. He speaks nicely when he chooses. This is his ‘aren’t I a caution, I’m a cockney’ act. He’s turning it on for Uncle Flea’s benefit. You always bring him out, Uncle Flea, don’t you?”

Miss Tottenham caught Troy’s eyes and slightly cast up her own.

“Really?” asked the enchanted Colonel. “Do I really, though?

Mr. Smith quietened down after this exchange and they all went in to tea, which had been set out in the dining-room and had none of the cosiness of Troy’s and Hilary’s tête-à-têtes by the boudoir fire. Indeed an air of constraint hung over the party which Cressida’s refusal to act as chatelaine did nothing to relieve.

“You’re not asking me to do the pouring-out bit, darling, for God’s sake,” Cressida said. “It’d, you know, frankly bore the pants off me. I’ve got, you know, a kind of thing against it. Not my scene, you know.”

Mrs. Forrester stared fixedly at Cressida for some moments and then said, “Perhaps, Hilary, you would like me to perform.”

“Darling Auntie, please do. It will be like old times, won’t it? When Uncle Bert used to come to Eaton Square after you’d made it up over my upbringing.”

“That’s the ticket,” Mr. Smith agreed. “No hard feelings. Live and let live. That’s the story, Missus, isn’t it?”

“You’re a decent fellow in your own way, Smith.” Mrs. Forrester conceded. “We’ve learnt to understand each other, I daresay. What sort of tea do you like, Mrs. Alleyn?”

Troy thought, “I am among people who say what they think when they think it. Like children. This is a most unusual circumstance and might lead to anything.”

She excepted Mr. Smith from her blanket appraisal. “Mr. Smith,” she considered, “is a tricky little old man, and what he really thinks about the company he keeps is nobody’s business but his.”

“How’s all the villains, ’Illy?” he asked, putting his head on one side and jauntily quizzing his muffin. “Still keepin’ their noses clean?”

“Certainly, Uncle Bert, but do choose your words. I wouldn’t for the world Blore or Mervyn heard you talking like that. One of them might walk in at any moment.”

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Smith, unmoved.

“That yawning void over the fireplace,” Cressida said. “Is that where you meant? You know, about my picture?”

“Yes, my darling,” Hilary responded. “As a matter of fact,” he looked anxiously at Troy, “I’ve already ventured a tentative probe.”

Troy was saved the awkwardness of a reply by Cressida, who said, “I’d rather it was the drawing-room. Not all mixed in with the soup, and, you know, your far from groovy ancestors.” She glanced discontentedly at a Lely, two Raeburns and a Winterhalter. “You know,” she said.

Hilary turned rather pink: “We’ll have to see,” he said.

Mervyn came in with the cook’s compliments and the mince pies were ready when they were.

“What is he on about?” Cressida asked fretfully. “On top of tea? And anyway I abhor mincemeat.”

“Darling, I know. So, privately, do I. But it appears to be an authentic old custom. On taking one’s first bite,” Hilary explained, “one makes a wish. The ceremony is held by tradition in the kitchen. One need only take a token nibble. It will give him so much pleasure.”

“Are there still cats in the kitchen?” Cressida asked. “There’s my thing about cats, remember.”

“Mervyn,” Hilary said, “ask Cooke to put Slyboots and Smartypants out, will you? He’ll understand.”

“He’d better. I’m allergic,” Cressida told Troy. “Cats send me. But totally. I’ve only got to catch the eye of a cat and I am a psychotic wreck.” She enlarged upon her theme. It would be tedious to record how many times she said Troy knew.

“I should be pleased,” Mrs. Forrester said loudly, “to renew my acquaintance with Slyboots and Smartypants.”

“Rather you than me,” Cressida retorted, addressing herself to Mrs. Forrester for the first time but not looking at her.

“I so far agree with you, Hilary,” said Mrs. Forrester, “in your views on your staff, as to consider Cooke was well within his rights when he attacked the person who maltreated cats. Well within his rights I consider he was, I said —”

“Yes, Auntie, I know you did. Don’t we all! No, darling,” Hilary said, anticipating his beloved. “You’re the adorable exception. Well, now. Shall we all go and mumble up our mince?”

In the kitchen they were received by Kittiwee with ceremony. He beamed and dimpled but Troy thought there was a look of glazed displeasure in his eyes. This impression became unmistakable when infuriated yowls broke out behind a door into the yard. “Slyboots and Smartypants,” thought Troy.

A red-cheeked boy sidled in through the door, shutting it quickly on a crescendo of feline indignation.

“We’re sorry,” Hilary said, “about the puss-cats, Cooke.”

“It takes all sorts, doesn’t it, sir?” Kittiwee cryptically rejoined with a sidelong glance at Miss Tottenham. The boy, who was sucking his hand, looked resentfully through the window into the yard.

The mince pies were set out on a lordly dish in the middle of the kitchen table. Troy saw with relief that they were small. Hilary explained that they must take their first bites in turn, making a wish as they did so.

Afterwards Troy was to remember them as they stood sheepishly round the table. She was to think of those few minutes as almost the last spell of general tranquility that she experienced at Halberds.

“You first, Auntie,” Hilary invited.

“Aloud?” his aunt demanded. Rather hurriedly he assured her that her wish need not be articulate.

“Just as well,” she said. She seized her pie, and took a prodigious bite out of it. As she munched she fixed her eyes upon Cressida Tottenham, and suddenly Troy was alarmed. “I know what’s she wishing,” Troy thought. “As well as if she were to bawl it out in our faces. She’s wishing the engagement will be broken. I’m sure of it.”

Cressida herself came next. She made a great to-do over biting off the least possible amount and swallowing it as if it were medicine.

“Did you wish?” Colonel Forrester asked anxiously.

“I forgot,” she said and then screamed at the top of her voice. Fragments of mince pie escaped her lovely lips.

Mr. Smith let out a four-letter word and they all exclaimed. Cressida was pointing at the window into the yard. Two cats, a piebald and a tabby, sat on the outer sill, their faces slightly distorted by the glass, their eyes staring and their mouths opening and shutting in concerted meows.

“My dear girl,” Hilary said and made no attempt to disguise his exasperation.

“My poor pussies,” Kittiwee chimed in like a sort of alto to a leading baritone.

“I can’t take cats,” Cressida positively yelled.

“In which case,” Mrs. Forrester composedly observed, “you can take yourself out of the kitchen.”

“No, no,” pleaded the Colonel. “No, B. No, no, no! Dear me! Look here!”

The cats now began to make excruciating noises with their claws on the windowpane. Troy, who liked cats and found them amusing, was almost sorry to see them abruptly cease this exercise, reverse themselves on the sill, and disappear, tails up. Cressida, however, clapped her hands to her ears, screamed again, and stamped her feet like an exotic dancer.

Mr. Smith said drily, “No trouble!”

But Colonel Forrester gently comforted Cressida with a wandering account of a brother-officer whose abhorrence of felines in some mysterious way brought about a deterioration in the lustre of his accoutrements. It was an incomprehensible narrative, but Cressida sat on a kitchen chair and stared at him and became quiet.

“Never mind!” Hilary said on a note of quiet despair. “As we were.” He appealed to Troy: “Will you?” he asked.

Troy applied herself to a mince pie, and as she did so there came into her mind a wish so ardent that she could almost have thought she spoke it aloud. “Don’t,” she found herself dottily wishing, “let anything beastly happen. Please.” She then complimented Kittiwee on his cooking.

Colonel Forrester followed Troy. “You would be surprised,” he said, beaming at them, “if you knew about my wish. That you would.” He shut his eyes and heartily attacked his pie. “Delicious!” he said.

Mr. Smith said: “How soft can you get!” and ate the whole of his pie with evident and noisy relish.

Hilary brought up the rear, and when they had thanked Kittiwee they left the kitchen. Cressida said angrily that she was going to take two aspirins and go to bed until dinner time. “And I don’t,” she added, looking at her fiancé, “want to be disturbed.”

“You need have no misgivings, my sweet,” he rejoined and his aunt gave a laugh that might equally have been called a snort. “Your uncle and I,” she said to Hilary, “will take the air, as usual, for ten minutes.”

“But — Auntie — it’s too late. It’s dark and it may be snowing.”

“We shall confine ourselves to the main courtyard. The wind is in the east, I believe.”

“Very well,” he agreed. “Uncle Bert, shall we have our business talk?”

“Suits me,” said Mr. Smith. “Any time.”

Troy wanted to have a glower at her work and said as much. So they went their several ways.

As she walked through the hall and along the passage that led to the library, Troy was struck by the extreme quietude that obtained indoors at Halberds. The floor was thickly carpeted. Occasional lamps cast a subdued light on the walls but they were far apart. Whatever form of central heating had been installed was almost too effective. She felt as if she moved through a steamed-up tunnel.

Here was the door into the library. It was slightly ajar. She opened it, took two steps, and while the handle was still in her grasp was hit smartly on the head.

It was a light blow and was accompanied by the reek of turpentine. She was neither hurt nor frightened but so much taken by surprise that for a moment she was bereft of reasoning. Then she remembered there was a light switch inside the door and turned it on.

There was the library: warm, silent, smelling of leather, wood fires and paint. There was the portrait on its easel and the workbench with her familiar gear.

And there, on the carpet at her feet, the tin palette-can in which she put her oil and turpentine.

And down her face trickled a pungent little stream.

The first thing Troy did after making this discovery was to find the clean rag on her bench and wipe her face. Hilary, dimly lit on her easel, fixed her with an enigmatic stare. “And a nice party,” she muttered, “you’ve let me in for, haven’t you?”

She turned back towards the door which she found, to her surprise, was now shut. A trickle of oil and turpentine made its sluggish way down the lacquer-red paint. But would the door swing to of its own accord? As if to answer her, it gave a little click and opened a couple of inches. She remembered that this was habitual with it. A faulty catch, she supposed.

But someone had shut it.

She waited for a moment, pulling herself together. Then she walked quickly to the door, opened it, and repressed a scream. She was face-to-face with Mervyn.

This gave her a much greater shock than the knock on her head. She heard herself make a nightmarish little noise in her throat.

“Was there anything, madam?” he asked. His face was ashen.

“Did you shut the door? Just now?”

“No, madam.”

“Come in, please.”

She thought he was going to refuse but he did come in, taking four steps and then stopping where the can still lay on the carpet.

“It’s made a mess,” Troy said.

“Allow me, madam.”

He picked it up, walked over to the bench, and put it down.

“Look at the door,” Troy said.

She knew at once that he had already seen it. She knew he had come into the room while she cleaned her face and had crept out again, shutting the door behind him.

“The tin was on the top of the door,” Troy said. “It fell on my head. A booby-trap.”

“Not a very nice thing,” he whispered.

“No. A booby-trap.”

“I never!” Mervyn burst out. “My God, I never. My God, I swear I never.”

“I can’t think — really — why you should.”

“That’s right,” he agreed feverishly. “That’s dead right. Christ, why should I! Me!”

Troy began to wipe the trickle from the door. It came away cleanly, leaving hardly a trace.

Mervyn dragged a handkerchief from his pocket, dropped on his knees, and violently attacked the stain on the string-coloured carpet.

“I think plain turpentine might do it,” Troy said.

He looked round wildly. She fetched him a bottle of turpentine from the bench.

“Ta,” he said and set to work again. The nape of his neck shone with sweat. He mumbled.

“What?” Troy asked. “What did you say?”

“He’ll see. He notices everything. They’ll say I done it.”

“Who?”

“Everybody. That lot. Them.”

Troy heard herself saying: “Finish it off with soap and water and put down more mats.” The carpet round her easel had, at her request, been protected by upside-down mats from the kitchen quarters.

He gazed up at her. He looked terrified and crafty like a sly child.

“You won’t do me?” he asked. “Madam? Honest? You won’t grass? Not that I done it, mind. I never. I’d be balmy, woon’t I? I never.”

“All right, all right,” Troy almost shouted. “Don’t let’s have all that again. You say you didn’t and I — As a matter of fact, I believe you.”

“Gor’ bless you, lady.”

“Yes, well, never mind all that. But if you didn’t,” Troy said sombrely, “who on earth did?”

“Ah! That’s diffrent, ainnit? What say I know?”

“You know!”

“I got me own idea, ain’ I? Trying to put one acrost me. Got it in for all of us, that sod, excuse me for mentioning it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems to me that I’m the one —”

“Do me a favour. You! Lady — you’re just the mug, see? It’s me it was set up for. Use your loaf, lady.”

Mervyn sat back on his heels and stared wildly at Troy. His face, which had reminded her of Kittiwee’s pastry, now changed colour: he was blushing.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’ll think of me, madam,” he said carefully. “I forgot myself, I’m that put out.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “But I wish you’d just explain—”

He got to his feet and backed to the door, screwing the rag round his hand. “Oh madam, madam, madam,” he implored. “I do wish you’d just use your loaf.”

And with that he left her.

It was not until she reached her room and set about washing the turpentine and oil out of her hair that Troy remembered Mervyn had gone to gaol for murdering someone with a booby-trap.

If Cressida had lost any ground at all with her intended over the affair of the cats, it seemed to Troy that she made it up again and more during the course of the evening. She was the last to arrive in the main drawing-room where tonight, for the first time, they assembled before dinner.

She wore a metallic trousered garment so adhesive that her body might itself have been gilded like the two quattrocento victories that trumpeted above the chimney-piece. When she moved, her dress, recalling Herrick, seemed to melt about her as if she were clad in molten gold. She looked immensely valuable and of course tremendously lovely. Troy heard Hilary catch his breath. Even Mrs. Forrester gave a slight grunt while Mr. Smith, very softly, produced a wolf whistle. The Colonel said, “My dear, you are quite bewildering,” which was, Troy thought, as apt a way of putting it as any other. But still, she had no wish to paint Cressida and again she was uneasily aware of Hilary’s questioning looks.

They had champagne cocktails that evening. Mervyn was in attendance under Blore’s supervision, and Troy was careful not to look at Mervyn. She was visited by a sense of detachment as if she hovered above the scene rather than moved through it. The beautiful room, the sense of ease, the unforced luxury, of a kind of aesthetic liberation, seemed to lose substance and validity and to become — what? Sterile?

“I wonder,” said Hilary at her elbow, “what that look means. An impertinent question, by the way, but of course you don’t have to give me an answer.” And before she could do so he went on. “Cressida is lovely, don’t you think?”

“I do indeed but you mustn’t ask me to paint her.”

“I thought that was coming.”

“It would be no good.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“It would give you no pleasure.”

“Or perhaps too much,” Hilary said. “Of a dangerous kind.”

Troy thought it better not to reply to this.

“Well,” Hilary said, “it shall be as it must be. Already I feel the breath of Signor Annigoni down the nape of my neck. Another champagne cocktail? Of course you will. Blore!”

He stayed beside her, rather quiet for him, watching his fiancée, but, Troy felt, in some indefinable way, still communicating with her.

At dinner Hilary put Cressida in the chatelaine’s place and Troy thought how wonderfully she shone in it and how when they were married Hilary would like to show her off at much grander parties than this strange little assembly. Like a humanate version of his great possessions, she thought, and was uncomfortable in the notion.

Stimulated perhaps by champagne, Cressida was much more effervescent than usual. She and Hilary had a mock argument with amorous overtones. She began to tease him about the splendour of Halberds and then when he looked huffy added, “Not that I don’t devour every last bit of it. It sends the Tottenham blood seething in my veins like…” She stopped and looked at Mrs. Forrester, who, over folded arms and with a magisterial frown, steadily returned her gaze.

“Anyway,” Cressida said, waving a hand at Hilary, “I adore it all.”

Colonel Forrester suddenly passed his elderly, veined fingers across his eyes and mouth.

“Darling!” Hilary said and raised his glass to Cressida.

Mr. Bert Smith also became a little flown with champagne. He talked of his and Hilary’s business affairs and Troy thought he must be quite as shrewd as he gave himself out to be. It was not at all surprising that he had got on in such a spectacular manner. She wondered if, in the firm of Bill-Tasman and Smith Associates, which was what their company seemed to be called, Mr. Smith was perhaps the engine and Hilary the exquisite bodywork and upholstery.

Colonel Forrester listened to the high-powered talk with an air of wonderment. He was beside Troy and had asked to “take her in” on his arm, which she had found touching.

“Do you follow all this?” he asked her in a conspiratorial aside. He was wearing his hearing aid.

“Not very well. I’m an ass at business,” she muttered and delighted him.

“So am I! I know! So am I! But we have to pretend, don’t we?”

“I daren’t. I’d give myself away, at once.”

“But it’s awfully clever. All the brain work, you know!” he murmured, raising his brows and gazing at Troy. “Terrific! Phew! Don’t you agree?”

She nodded and he slyly bit his lip and hunched his shoulders.

“We mustn’t let on we’re so muddly,” said the Colonel.

Troy thought: this is how he used to talk to thoroughly nice girls when he was an ensign fifty years ago. All gay and playful with the “Destiny Waltz” swooning away on the bandstand and an occasional flutter in the conservatory. The chaperones thought he was just the job, no doubt. And she wondered if he proposed to Aunt Bed on a balcony at a regimental ball. But what the devil was Aunt Bed like in her springtide, Troy wondered, and was at a loss. A dasher, perhaps? A fine girl? A spanker?

“… so I said, ‘Do me a favour, chum. You call it what you like: for my book you’re at the fiddle! Distinguished and important collection! Yeah? So’s your old man!’ Nothing but a bunch of job-burgers, that lot.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Uncle Bert,” said Hilary definitively and bent towards his aunt.

“That’s a very nice grenade you’re wearing, Auntie darling,” he said. “I don’t remember it, do I?”

“Silver wedding,” she said. “Your uncle. I don’t often get it out.”

It was a large diamond brooch pinned in a haphazard fashion to the black cardigan Mrs. Forrester wore over her brown satin dress. Her pearls were slung about her neck and an increased complement of rings had been shoved down her fingers.

Mr. Smith, his attention diverted from high finance, turned and contemplated her.

“Got ’em all on, eh?” he said. “Very nice, too. Here! Do you still cart all your stuff round with you? Is that right? In a tin box? Is that a fact?”

“Pas,” Mrs. Forrester said, “devant les domestiques.”

“How does the chorus go?”

Hilary intervened. “No, honestly, Aunt B,” he protested throwing an agitated glance at Blore, who was at the sideboard with his back turned.

“Hilary,” said Cressida, “that reminds me.”

“Of what, my sweet?” Hilary asked apprehensively.

“It doesn’t really matter. I was just wondering about tomorrow. The party. The tree. It’s in the drawing-room isn’t it? I’ve been wondering, what’s the scene? You know? The stage-management and all that.”

It was the first time Troy had heard Cressida assume an air of authority about Halberds, and she saw that Hilary was delighted. He embarked on a long explanation. The sleigh bells, the tape-recorded sounds, the arrival of Colonel Forrester as a Druid through the french windows. The kissing bough. The tree. The order of events. Colonel Forrester listened with the liveliest satisfaction.

This discussion took them through the rest of dinner. Cressida continued to fill out the role of hostess with considerable aplomb, and before Mrs. Forrester, who was gathering herself together, could do anything more about it, leant towards her and said, “Shall we, Aunt B?” with a ravishing smile. It was the first time, Troy suspected, that she had ever addressed her future aunt-by-marriage in those terms. Mrs. Forrester looked put out. She said, “I was going to, anyway,” rose with alacrity, and made for the door. Her husband got there first and opened it.

“We shan’t stay long over our port,” he confided, looking from his wife to Troy. “Hilary says there are any number of things to be done. The tree and the kissing bough and all. Don’t you like, awfully,” he said to Troy, “having things to look forward to?”

When the ladies reached the drawing-room it was to find Vincent, Nigel and the apple-cheeked boy in the very act of wheeling in through the french windows a fine Christmas tree lightly powdered with snow. It was housed in a green tub and mounted on the kind of trolly garage hands lie upon when working underneath a car. At the far end of the room a green canvas sheet had been spread over Hilary’s superb carpet, and to the centre of this the tree was propelled.

Winter had entered the room with the tree and laid its hands on their faces. Cressida cried out against it. The men shut the french windows and went away. A stepladder and an enormous box of decorations had been left beside the tree.

From the central chandelier in the drawing-room someone— Nigel, perhaps — had hung the traditional kissing bough, a bell-shaped structure made from mistletoe and holly with scarlet apples depending from it by golden tinsel. It was stuck about with scarlet candles. The room was filled with the heady smell of resinous greenery.

Troy was almost as keen on Christmas trees as Colonel Forrester himself and thought the evening might well be saved by their joint activities. Mrs. Forrester eyed the tree with judicious approval and said there was nothing the matter with it.

“There’s a Crib,” she said. “I attend to that. I bought it in Oberammergau when Hilary was a Pagan child of seven. He’s still a Pagan of course, but he brings it out to oblige me. Though how he reconciles it with Fred in his heathen beard and that brazen affair on the chandelier is best known to himself. Still, there is the service. Half-past ten in the chapel. Did he tell you?”

“No,” Troy said. “I didn’t even know there was a chapel.”

“In the east wing. The parson from the prison takes it High Church, which Hilary likes. Do you consider him handsome?”

“No,” Troy said. “But he’s paintable.”

“Ho,” said Mrs. Forrester.

Mervyn came in with the coffee and liqueurs. When he reached Troy he gave her a look of animal subservience that she found extremely disagreeable.

Cressida’s onset of hostesslike responsibility seemed to have been left behind in the dining-room. She stood in front of the fire jiggling her golden slipper on her toe and leaning a superb arm along the chimney-piece. She waited restively until Mervyn had gone and then said, “That man gives me the horrors.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Forrester.

“He’s such a creep. They all are, if it comes to that. Oh yes, I know all about Hilly’s ideas and I grant you it’s one way out of the servant problem. I mean if we’re to keep Halberds up and all that, this lot is one way of doing it. Personally, I’d rather have Greeks or something. You know.”

“You don’t see it, as Hilary says he does, from the murderer’s point of view?” Mrs. Forrester observed.

“Oh, I know he’s on about all that,” Cressida said, jiggling her slipper, “but, let’s face it, gracious living is what really turns him on. Me, too. You know?”

Mrs. Forrester stared at her for several seconds and then, with an emphatic movement of her torso, directed herself at Troy. “How do you manage?” she asked.

“As best we can. My husband’s a policeman and his hours are enough to turn any self-respecting domestic into a psychotic wreck.”

“A policeman?” Cressida exclaimed and added, “Oh, yes, I forgot. Hilly told me. But he’s madly high-powered and famous, isn’t he?”

As there seemed to be no answer to this, Troy did not attempt to make one.

“Shouldn’t we be doing something about the tree?” she asked Mrs. Forrester.

“Hilary likes to supervise. You should know that by now.”

“Not exactly a jet-set scene, is it?” Cressida said. “You know. Gaol-boss. Gaol-doctor. Warders. Chaplain. To say nothing of the gaol-kids. Oh, I forgot. A groovy shower of neighbours, all very county and not one under the age of seventy. Hilarious. Let the bells chime.”

“I am seventy years of age and my husband is seventy-three.”

“There I go,” Cressida said. “You know? The bottom.” She burst out laughing and suddenly knelt at Mrs. Forrester’s feet. She swung back the glossy burden of her hair and put her hands together. “I’m not as lethally awful as I make out,” she said. “You’ve both been fantastic to me. Always. I’m grateful. Hilly will have to beat me like a gong. You know? Bang-bang. Then I’ll behave beautifully. Sweetie-pie, Aunt B, forgive me.”

Troy thought, “Aunt Bed would have to be a Medusa to freeze her,” and sure enough a smile twitched at the corners of Mrs. Forrester’s mouth. “I suppose you’re no worse than the rest of your generation,” she conceded. “You’re clean and neat: I’ll say that for you.”

“As clean as a whistle and as neat as a new pin, aren’t I? Do you think I’ll adorn Hilly’s house, Aunt B?”

“Oh, you’ll look nice,” said Mrs. Forrester. “You may depend upon that. See you behave yourself.”

“Behave myself,” Cressida repeated. There was a pause. The fire crackled. A draught from somewhere up near the ceiling caused the kissing bough to turn a little on its cord. In the dining-room, made distant by heavy walls and doors, Hilary’s laugh sounded. With a change of manner so marked as to be startling Cressida said, “Would you call me a sinful lady, Aunt Bedelia?”

“What on earth are you talking about, child? What’s the matter with you?”

“Quite a lot, it appears. Look.”

She opened her golden bag and took out a folded piece of paper. “I found it under my door when I went up to dress. I was saving it for Hilary,” she said, “but you two may as well see it. Go on, please. Open it up. Read it. Both of you.”

Mrs. Forrester stared at her for a moment, frowned, and unfolded the paper. She held it away from her so that Troy could see what was printed on it in enormous capitals.

“What balderdash is this! Where did you get it?”

“I told you. Under my door.”

Mrs. Forrester made an abrupt movement as if to crush the paper, but Cressida’s hand was laid over hers. “No, don’t,” Cressida said, “I’m going to show it to Hilary. And I must say I hope it’ll change his mind about his ghastly Nigel.”

When Hilary was shown the paper, which was as soon as the men came into the drawing-room, he turned very quiet. For what seemed a long time he stood with it in his hands, frowning at it and saying nothing. Mr. Smith walked over to him, glanced at the paper, and gave out a soft, protracted whistle. Colonel Forrester looked inquiringly from Hilary to his wife, who shook her head at him. He then turned away to admire the tree and the kissing bough.

“Well, boy,” said Mrs. Forrester. “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know. Not, I think, what I am expected to make of it, Aunt Bed.”

“Whatever anybody makes of it,” Cressida pointed out, “it’s not the nicest kind of thing to find in one’s bedroom.”

Hilary broke into a strange apologia: tender, oblique, guarded. It was a horrid, silly thing to have happened, he told Cressida, and she mustn’t let it trouble her. It wasn’t worth a second thought. “Look,” he said, “up the chimney with it, vulgar little beast,” and threw it on the fire. It blackened, its preposterous legend turned white and started out in momentary prominence, it was reduced to a wraith of itself and flew out of sight. “Gone! Gone! Gone!” chanted Hilary rather wildly and spread his arms.

“I don’t think you ought to have done that,” Cressida said, “I think we ought to have kept it.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Smith chimed in. “For dabs,” he added.

This familiar departmental word startled Troy. Mr. Smith grinned at her. “That’s correct,” he said. “Innit? What your good man calls routine, that is. Dabs. You oughter kep’ it, ’Illy.”

“I think, Uncle Bert, I must be allowed to manage this ridiculous little incident in my own way.”

“Hullo-ullo-ullo!”

“I’m quite sure, Cressida darling, it’s merely an idiot-joke on somebody’s part. How I detest practical jokes!” Hilary hurried on with an unconvincing return to his usual manner. He turned to Troy, “Don’t you?”

“When they’re as unfunny as this. If this is one.”

“Which I don’t for a moment believe,” Cressida said. “Joke! It’s a deliberate insult. Or worse.” She appealed to Mrs. Forrester. “Isn’t it?” she demanded.

“I haven’t the remotest idea what it may be. What do you say to all this, Fred, I said what —”

She broke off. Her husband had gone to the far end of the room and was pacing out the distance from the french windows to the tree.

“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen — fifteen feet exactly,” he was saying. “I shall have to walk fifteen feet. Who’s going to shut the french window after me? These things need to be worked out.”

“Honestly, Hilly darling, I do not think it can be all shrugged off, you know, like a fun thing. When you yourself have said Nigel always refers to his victim as a sinful lady. It seems to me to be perfectly obvious he’s set his sights at me and I find it terrifying. You know, terrifying.”

“But,” Hilary said, “it isn’t. I promise you, my lovely child, it’s not at all terrifying. The circumstances are entirely different —”

“I should hope so considering she was a tart.”

“— and of course I shall get to the bottom of it. It’s too preposterous. I shall put it before —”

“You can’t put it before anybody. You’ve burnt it.”

“Nigel is completely recovered.”

“ ’Ere,” Mr. Smith said. “What say one of that lot’s got it in for ’im? What say it’s been done to discredit ’im? Planted? Spiteful, like?”

“But they get on very well together.”

“Not with the Colonel’s chap. Not with Moult they don’t. No love lost there, I’ll take a fiver on it. I seen the way they look at ’im. And ’im at them.”

“Nonsense, Smith,” said Mrs. Forrester. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Moult’s been with us for twenty years.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Oh Lord!” Cressida said loudly and dropped into an armchair.

“— and who’s going to read out the names?” the Colonel speculated. “I can’t wear my specs. They’d look silly.”

“Fred!”

“What, B?”

“Come over here, I said come over here.”

“Why? I’m working things out.”

“You’re overexciting yourself. Come here. It’s about Moult, I said it’s…”

The Colonel, for him almost crossly, said, “You’ve interrupted my train of thought, B. What about Moult?”

As if in response to a heavily contrived cue and a shove from offstage, the door opened and in came Moult himself, carrying a salver.

“Beg pardon, sir,” Moult said to Hilary, “but I thought perhaps this might be urgent, sir. For the Colonel, sir.”

“What is it, Moult?” the Colonel asked quite testily.

Moult advanced the salver in his employer’s direction. Upon it lay an envelope addressed in capitals: “COL. FORRESTER.”

“It was on the floor of your room, sir. By the door, sir. I thought it might be urgent,” said Moult.