‘For God’s sake, Dad,’ Reggie said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Don’t overwhelm me with affection,’ Eric said bitterly. ‘I might get above myself.’
‘Well, of course, we’re glad to see you,’ Midge said. ‘We just never expected it. How did you get in? When did you arrive? Why didn’t you let us know?’
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ Eric said. ‘I flew into Heathrow and hired a car. Then I found I was driving straight into a storm. It got worse and worse. Finally, I was obliged to abandon the car and continue on foot—’ He flapped a hand towards the window framing the blizzard. ‘It’s still out there somewhere.’
‘Impeding the snow ploughs,’ Midge murmured.
‘Fortunately, I was quite near by then, but it was very late. The Manor was dark when I arrived. I let myself in with my own key, had a snack—’
‘The three missing chicken fillets—’ It was all becoming clear. ‘You ate them!’
‘Not all of them,’ Eric said defensively. ‘I shared one with a friendly cat. He’s new since my time, but seems very pleasant. In fact, that’s how I knew where to find them. He led me over to the larder and looked so hopeful I knew there must be something good inside.’
‘Trust Ackroyd!’ Midge said. ‘No wander he looked so guilty. He was to blame for them going missing.’
‘Then I went up to bed,’ Eric continued. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you in the family wing, so I checked the register for an empty room and went up the service staircase to it.’
‘Producing the ghostly footsteps where they shouldn’t be.’ Reggie grinned across at Midge. ‘No wonder we’ve been dogged by the supernatural today. I suppose—’ he addressed his father—‘you utilized the service passage to disappear into when the hunting party almost caught up with you in the upper corridor?’
‘Now that you’ve brought it up,’ Eric said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you: what’s going on here? When I left it to you, this was a perfectly respectable family hotel. Why have you hired it out as a lunatic asylum? Who are all these mad screaming females? And who was that demented girl who hurled herself at my head and called me Daddy?’
‘About that—’ Reggie said. ‘Now that they’ve spotted you, I’m afraid you’re going to have to resign yourself to the fact that she is your daughter, the Honourable Petronella Van Dine. Bertha is right—it’s the only explanation. Especially with that tan.’
‘What’s wrong with my tan? Why should I claim a complete stranger as a daughter? Who are all these—?’
‘Hard cheese, old boy.’ Cedric had strolled into the kitchen and was grinning evilly at his brother-in-law. ‘You’ve walked right into the middle of it and you’ll have to take the consequences. You’ll be lucky if you’re not done away with before the weekend is over. I was.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t pay any attention to Cedric,’ Reggie said. ‘He’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘Perfectly true, old boy. I turned up my toes after the mushroom soup last night. Unless there was something in the coffee.’
‘You’re raving mad,’ Eric said flatly. ‘The lot of you.’
‘It’s really quite simple,’ Midge said. ‘Let me explain. We’ve got a murder on this weekend. Cedric doesn’t count —he’s dead now—but he was Hermione’s brother—’
‘He’s her husband.’ Eric fought weakly for his sanity. ‘I’m her brother.’
‘No, you’re just an old friend. I’m the housekeeper here and Reggie is butler-barman-major domo. The Hon. Petronella is your daughter and Lady Hermione is sponsoring her for the London Season. She’s doing it because you’re such an old friend of hers and you can’t do it because you’re a widowed tea planter in Ceylon—’
Midge raced through the explanation, aware of modified uproar in the dining-room. She got to her feet. It was time to serve dessert and hope that would keep them occupied for a while.
‘There now—’ She smiled encouragingly at her father-in-law. ‘Got it?’
‘I don’t want it,’ Eric bleated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cedric said. ‘I’ll go over his lines with him. He’ll have it by tea-time.’
‘It won’t matter if he’s a bit vague—’ Midge tried to reassure herself as much as the others. If Cedric was going to work with Eric, it would be the blind leading the blind. ‘He won’t have to be up on everything that’s been happening. He’s been out in Ceylon all these years.’
‘You keep babbling about Ceylon,’ Eric complained. ‘What’s happened to Sri Lanka?’
‘Sri Lanka hasn’t happened yet,’ Midge threw back over her shoulder. ‘This is 1935.’
As she went through the door, she saw Eric slump forward to rest his head on his forearms, moaning, ‘The inmates have taken over the asylum.’
‘Good to see old Eric again.’ Wearing thin rubber kitchen gloves, Colonel Heather had smeared the blade of the carving knife with copious blood. Now he squinted at it thoughtfully. ‘He’s looking very well.’
‘If a bit confused.’ Midge dipped into the bucket of blood and arranged a neat coagulation between Grace Holloway’s shoulder-blades.
‘Well, of course, it’s confusing.’ Grace wriggled as the stuff seeped through to her skin. ‘It must be like walking in in the middle of a film—in the days when they had continuous performances. Cedric will straighten him out.’
‘Hah!’ The Colonel snorted. ‘I’d hate to bet Cedric’s got it straight himself yet.’
‘Anyway,’ Grace said complacently, ‘I dropped dark and sinister hints all through lunch. I think I’ve got them worried about me. One of them warned me that it wasn’t safe to let people think I might know too much. I said I’d tell everything I know at dinner tonight—’ She giggled. ‘Then four of them tried to follow me to protect me—but I gave them the slip.’
‘Good show!’ Colonel Heather said. He turned the knife over thoughtfully. ‘What do you think? A bloody handprint on the handle?’
‘Why not?’ Midge agreed. ‘Pull out all the stops.’
‘Right you are.’ He dipped his hand into the blood, then let most of it roll off. ‘They won’t get any fingerprints from these rubber gloves—not that any of them would know what to do with a fingerprint if they had one.’
‘I’m afraid some of them would try,’ Midge said. ‘And it would be a dead bore to get all inky and messy.’
‘We’ll make sure they realize that gloves were worn.’ Colonel Heather grasped the handle firmly with his bloodied glove, then carefully released it. The effect was satisfactorily gory. ‘Where do you want this now? On the floor or the bed?’
‘The floor, I think. Grace is going to drape herself across the bed. Give them two focal points.’
‘Like this?’ Grace obligingly pitched forward, face down, her head lolling off the side of the bed. Her arm dangled over her head at an awkward, potentially painful, angle.
‘Wait a minute.’ She changed position. Now her arm lay twisted behind her on the bed, another position where it would begin to ache in a very short time. ‘Oh—’ Grace Holloway had discovered the actress’s perennial problem —‘what do I do with my hands?’
‘Just try it this way.’ Midge eased the arm into a more comfortable angle. ‘You don’t have to stay like that right now. Just remember the way you are and fall back into it when you hear me leading the guests up to discover you. I’ll make enough noise to warn you.’
‘All right.’ Grace sat up, rubbing her arm. ‘There’s more to it than there looks, isn’t there?’
There was a sharp rap on the door. Grace gasped and hurled herself across the bed again. Colonel Heather stepped back out of the line of vision as Midge cautiously opened the door.
‘Right.’ Eric stepped briskly into the room. ‘I think I’ve got it now.’ His gaze fell on Grace and he shuddered visibly. ‘Oh my God! That’s grotesque!’
‘It’s supposed to be.’ Midge turned him around and opened the door again. ‘Let’s go downstairs and announce that we’ve just found her body.’
Grace sat up, blood oozing from her cardigan and dripping on the counterpane. ‘Don’t be long. Hermione was right—this stuff gets cold and clammy. It’s like sitting around in a wet bathing suit.’
‘We’ll be no time at all,’ Midge assured her, shepherding Eric and Colonel Heather out into the corridor. ‘Remember, keep your face turned away and don’t move. I’ll shuffle them in and out as fast as possible.’ She closed the door behind them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Eric said, trailing them down the corridor, ‘but I think all that blood is in very bad taste. I’m surprised Miss Holloway allows it. Why can’t she be a tidy discreet corpse, like the other one?’
Midge and Colonel Heather exchanged one startled, uncomprehending glance, then swung around to face Eric.
‘What other one?’ Midge asked.
‘The one I nearly tripped over at the foot of the service stairs—the crazy one. Now she looked quite respectable. Scarcely any blood at all. Of course, the knife was still in the wound—I’ve heard that makes a difference. But need you be so graphic with Miss Holloway? She’s far more ladylike than the other one—I’m surprised she didn’t object.’
‘The other one,’ Midge repeated faintly. She and Colonel Heather wheeled and raced for the service stairs. The Colonel reached up and pressed the switch hidden in the candle sconce, the concealed panel swung open.
‘I say—’ Eric brought up the rear. ‘What’s biting you two?’ He followed them down the stairs.
She was lying at the foot of the stairs, just inside the ground-floor secret panel. As Eric had said, she looked quite tidy and discreet. As he had failed to notice, she also looked extremely dead.
‘Is there a pulse?’ Colonel Heather asked without hope, fumbling for the limp wrist. ‘No,’ he answered himself. ‘Not a flutter.’
‘I say—’ Eric was uncertain now, looking from one to the other. ‘What’s the—?’
‘Whe-eew—’ The whistle came from above. ‘So that explains our ghostly noises. Secret passages!’ Bertha Stout came into view, behind her was Stanley Marric.
‘Oh no,’ Midge moaned. ‘We left the panel open.’
‘What’s going on down here?’ Bertha asked eagerly. ‘Is that a body? Who got it this time?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eric seemed the only one able to speak. ‘But she does it awfully well.’
‘Hey!’ Bertha moved closer and peered down at the body. ‘That’s one of the Chandlers. Leave it to them,’ she said in disgust, ‘to try to get in on the act.’
‘She—She’s not act—’ Midge’s voice evaporated in a squeak. She swallowed helplessly.
Over her head, Colonel Heather met Stanley Marric’s eyes and slowly shook his head.
‘Dead? Dead?’ Bertha was incredulous. ‘She can’t be. She—Which one is it?’
Midge still stood frozen, all the implications bursting upon her. The others hadn’t got that far yet.
‘Her name tag says “Brigid”,’ Colonel Heather stooped again and reported. ‘But you can’t go by that. I suspect they were always switching them back and forth.’
‘They did it all the time,’ Bertha agreed. ‘They thought it was terribly funny.’
‘The other one is going to take it hard,’ Stan said uneasily. ‘I mean, a twin—’
‘God, yes!’ Bertha was plunged into gloom, the implications were filtering through to her, too. ‘If you ask me, neither of them was too stable. They had more money than brains—and that wouldn’t have been hard.’
‘We’d better let Roberta tell the other one.’ Stan’s brow cleared slightly as he saw the unpleasant task could be delegated. ‘She knew them both better than any of us.’
‘Good thing she’s here.’ Bertha was in complete agreement. ‘If she hadn’t made it before the blizzard cut us off—’
‘That’s right,’ Colonel Heather said softly. ‘The problem is trickier than it looks at first sight, isn’t it?’
‘Hell!’ Bertha said decisively. ‘We’ve got to call in the cops!’
‘We’ll do that now.’ Midge regained her voice. ‘If you’ll just step outside and wait for me, I’ll go upstairs and lock the panel so that no one else can stumble into the passage. We—we’ll have to leave everything as it is, so that the police can see it.’ The police could get through, couldn’t they? If they couldn’t make it by road, they had helicopters—
‘I’ll take care of the upstairs panel,’ Colonel Heather said. ‘You’d better find Reggie and let him know what’s happened. Then call the police.’
‘Reggie—’ Midge stumbled towards the exit, heedless of whether the others were following her. She wanted Reggie. She wanted to collapse into his arms and let him take over. Behind her, she was dimly aware of the click of the lock, securing the hidden panel against accidental discovery.
‘That this should happen,’ Eric muttered, ‘in my home.’
Of them all, Colonel Heather was the only one who remembered Miss Holloway. After locking the upstairs panel from the outside, he went back to her room, tapped on the door and entered.
She lay almost motionless. The bed was still quivering from the force with which she had thrown herself across it—trying not to giggle—waiting for the first shrieks of horror.
‘You can get up now, Grace. The game is over.’ Colonel Heather sighed deeply. ‘They’ve started killing each other, instead.’
