Ackroyd stalked the kitchen, twitching and purring as the rich aroma of roasting beef perfumed his air.
‘I never did hold with all this,’ Cook told him, crashing another pan into the sink. ‘And now look where it’s got us. Bodies—real live bodies—dead all over my outside storehouse.’
Ackroyd twined himself around her ankles, assuring her of complete agreement.
‘Cupboard love,’ she accused, freeing her ankles. ‘You’d agree with anyone who could open the fridge or cooker.’
‘Don’t forget working tin-openers. They also loom large in his young life.’ Midge entered and slumped wearily into a chair. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘I don’t know—and I’m sure I don’t care.’
‘I don’t mean the guests. I know where they are. They’re all in their rooms dressing for dinner.’
Cook sniffed.
‘They might as well,’ Midge defended. ‘They have to eat, anyway. “Business as usual” is a better attitude than screaming panic.’
‘Call that business!’ Cook said. ‘How they can sit down and eat with each other, knowing one of themselves is a murderer, I can’t imagine.’
‘Perhaps they haven’t got that far yet,’ Midge said. ‘Perhaps they think one of us did it.’
‘Oh, good—’ Cedric poked his head cautiously around the door, then advanced into the kitchen. ‘The coast is clear. Hermione is just coming. She’s making sure her tiara is on straight.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Cook said. ‘I wish you didn’t have to go out there again tonight.’
‘I don’t,’ Cedric said. ‘I’m safely dead. But I know what you mean. I’d as soon Hermione stayed behind the scenes where it’s safe. Still,’ he added cheerfully, ‘once she’s murdered, she’ll be all right.’
‘You’re not still going on with that.’ Cook was shocked.
‘If we don’t, there’s going to be a long, dour evening ahead, with everyone sitting around brooding and suspecting each other.’
‘And quite rightly,’ Cook said. ‘One of them did it.’
‘We don’t want them to start thinking about that,’ Midge pointed out. ‘It’s much safer to keep them concentrating on imaginary murders. If they decide to try to track down the real killer, they could be in deadly danger. We must do all we can to keep the surface smooth until the police can take over—and heaven knows when that will be.’
‘Where’s Reggie?’ Cedric asked abruptly. ‘He hasn’t gone out in this to try to fetch them, has he?’
‘He’s not that foolhardy. The temperature has been dropping by the minute ever since it began to get dark.’
A discreet tap sounded from the kitchen entrance to the servants’ passage, the panel moved and Miss Holloway fluttered into the room, followed by Colonel Heather. ‘I do hope this is in order,’ she said. ‘We … we didn’t want to Make Our Entrance until we discovered which way the wind was blowing.’
‘Quite so,’ the Colonel said. ‘We mean, is this the sort of Show that Must Go On? We’re not cancelling out, are we?’
‘There’s no danger of that, is there?’ Hermione had appeared in the doorway in time to hear the question. ‘I’ll sure we ought to go on but, in view of what’s happened, I don’t think I should be stabbed. It would not only be bad taste but, for all we know, someone might get over-excited at the sight of blood. I don’t think we should risk it.’
‘Quite right,’ Cedric said. ‘I must say, I don’t like the idea of knives around Hermione myself. Can’t you switch the method to poison instead? Cut the risk of one of those bleeders going berserk with blood-lust or whatever.’
‘That should be easy enough,’ Midge agreed. ‘We’ve already planted doubts about the cocktails. We’ll fall back on the cyanide gimmick. Hermione can keel over after an injudicious drink.’
‘Before dinner?’ Cedric asked hopefully.
‘It had better be after,’ Midge decided. ‘We’ll want to see what the prevailing feeling is before we go too far. If they have strong objections, we’ll have to cancel the rest of the performance, but most of them seemed anxious for the weekend to continue as scheduled.’
‘Just the same—’ Cedric threw an arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her to him in a rare display of affection. ‘Watch yourself, old girl. I don’t like your being out there among those nutters without me to keep an eye on you.’
‘I’ll be all right.’ Hermione re-settled her tiara with a gratified air. ‘It was obviously a personal thing. Someone settling a private score.’
‘Who?’ The question slipped out before Midge could stop it; she had promised herself that she wasn’t going to think about that tonight.
‘Practically anyone, I should imagine,’ Cedric said, not very helpfully. ‘That was a most tedious young woman. Neither she nor her twin would be much missed.’
‘Damnably difficult, twins.’ Colonel Heather was equally unhelpful. ‘Question is, did they get the right one? Or do they mean to get both of them before they’re done?’
‘Please!’ Midge wailed. ‘Don’t even suggest such a thing. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Hiding your head in the sand won’t do any good,’ Cedric said. ‘Jack’s got a sound point there. How do we know they’ve finished? We haven’t.’
‘That’s another thing,’ Miss Holloway said, as Midge began to feel reality slide away from her. ‘What happens to me now? I mean, am I still going to be murdered? Or is it just Hermione? I’ve lost track.’
‘Just me,’ Hermione said firmly. ‘We’re back to the original script.’
‘In that case, what am I to do?’ Miss Holloway looked distressed. ‘I spent all tea-time promising them a Startling Revelation after dinner. And now I’m still alive and I haven’t any idea what I can tell them.’
‘Oh Lord,’ Midge said. ‘I’d forgotten that.’
‘Ha—she’s got you there,’ Cedric crowed. ‘You’re going to have to come up with something.’
‘Let me think about it,’ Midge said. ‘I’ll talk to Reggie—’
‘String it out until my death scene,’ Hermione suggested practically. ‘Tell them you can’t speak while I’m around. Act afraid of me. Then, after I’m murdered, you’ll be another strong suspect.’
‘What a splendid idea!’ Grace Holloway exclaimed with delight. ‘I shall—’
The sharp peal of the bell startled them all. The familiar number swung mockingly in its box.
‘Bramwell and I will require dinner in our rooms tonight,’ Amaryllis said regally.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barbour, that won’t be possible.’
‘Not possible?’ Amaryllis drew herself up. ‘Surely you must understand that what has happened changes everything. My son cannot possibly be expected to expose himself to the company of murderers—’
‘Mrs Barbour, even with the best will in the world—’ something in Midge’s tone warned Amaryllis that this was not being extended—‘what you suggest would be impossible. We’re desperately short-handed. The storm has cut us off, the girls can’t get through from the village—’
‘Nonsense!’ Amaryllis said. ‘It stopped snowing an hour ago.’
Midge went to the window to check. She pulled back the curtain and gazed out on a spotless snow-shrouded landscape. A waxing moon hung in a cloudless black sky, casting strange shadows on terrain made unfamiliar by deep white drifts.
‘Even so—’ Midge turned back into the room. ‘Snow ploughs will have to clear the roads before anyone can get through. It could be twenty-four hours, perhaps longer, before they get to us. No one is going to come from the village tonight. I shall have to ask you and Bramwell to take your places in the dining-room, as usual.’
‘That’s monstrous!’ Amaryllis’s voice rose. ‘You are deliberately putting our lives in danger. I have a good mind to—to leave at once!’
‘If you think you can—’ Midge abandoned tact—‘go ahead.’
‘It’s all right, Midge.’ Bramwell had opened his door quietly and come into the sitting-room. ‘Mother’s just upset. She doesn’t mean what she’s saying. We’ll be down for dinner.’
The atmosphere was neutral and guarded as the meal commenced. The guests noticed, but refrained from commenting upon, the fact that one of the two places at the Chandler twins’ table had been removed and the ranks closed. The other place had been taken by Eric.
Tentatively, the polite conversations began, opened by the actor at each table. Reggie had chosen the most powerful wine and kept the glasses topped up so that the guests lost track of the amount they were drinking.
Gradually the tension eased. Someone dared to ask how Lauren was … where she was?
‘Sleeping,’ Midge said shortly. ‘We gave her a couple of sleeping pills. She’ll be out until morning.’
They relaxed still more after that. They began to feel their way back into the original purpose of the weekend. A few pointed questions were asked, unfortunately, of the wrong people.
‘Do you still feel guilty over your wife’s death?’
‘Me?’ Eric was understandably startled. ‘Guilty? Why should I?’
‘Well, you were driving, weren’t you?’
‘Was I?’ Eric looked around for help. Midge realized this was a plot point she had neglected to warn him about.
‘Please—’ Petronella leaned over from her table to rescue him. ‘Don’t upset Daddy. He hates remembering. Sometimes he can’t. The doctors called it selective amnesia.’
‘Very convenient,’ someone said and there was a murmur of assent. They were getting back on the trail.
Midge cleared the soup plates and carried them back to the kitchen where Cedric was helping Cook carve and serve up. Fluffy golden Yorkshire puddings floated on seas of gravy and roast potatoes nestled beside mounds of succulent beef. Midge began ladling pearl onions and peas into any available space on the plates. Without any help, it was easier to do everything in the kitchen rather than try to cope with serving dishes. Reggie loaded a tray with the filled plates and staggered into the dining-room.
The rest of them continued filling plates while Reggie and Lettie returned at brisk intervals to reload their trays. Midge had lost count of the servings when Cook said, ‘There, that’s the last one. Tell them they can have seconds, if they like. There’s plenty left.’
Midge loaded the last few plates on to a tray of her own and brought it into the dining-room. Fortunately, the last table to be served was so deep in conversation no one had minded waiting.
‘Ah, our charming housekeeper—’ Dixon Carr leaned to one side as Midge slid his plate in front of him. ‘Surely no the person we should compliment on the marvellous recreation of the Golden Age.’
‘Golden for whom?’ Bertha Stout challenged. ‘Have you read those books? Really read them?’
‘Of course I have. What do you mean by that?’
‘You can’t have, or you’d know what I mean. Unless you read them without thinking, you must be totally uncritical.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I’ve always prided myself that I’m as good a critic as the next man—or woman.’
‘And you can still call it the Golden Age? Oh, I’ve read most of them and, believe me, I approach them as though they’re a hand grenade with the pin out. You never know when they’re going to blow up in your face. You’re reading along and everything is drowsy afternoon, old lace, the hum of bees in the hollyhocks, church bells chiming the hour and honey for tea when—Pow! Suddenly, you’re rocked back on your heels by a blast of anti-Semitism that leaves you reeling. And it’s so casual, so taken-for-granted. Perhaps that’s the worst of all.’
‘It was part of the climate of the times,’ Dix agreed uneasily. ‘Seen in historical perspective, it goes a long way towards explaining how Hitler got away with it in his push to power. The scapegoats were ready-made by the attitudes already inexistence.’
‘Right—so it wasn’t so golden if you were Jewish. Then there’s the attitude towards women. The gilt started wearing pretty thin on the gingerbread as the years wore on. If you were over twenty-two or so, you were over the hill. How many times have you been reading and—another Pow! You come across a description like: “There were still remnants of the great beauty she had had in her youth, although she must have been thirty-five at least.” There’s a sexism to warm the cockles of your heart.’
‘It wasn’t just against women,’ Dix argued. ‘It was ageism, plain and simple. You can fall over the description of a doddering old man making his Will before he’s too senile to be able to make a valid distribution of his worldly goods. Then, a few pages later, he has a birthday party surrounded by his loving kin, waiting to see if he’ll survive the excitement of the party—and you then discover he’s all of sixty-two.’
‘And, if you were a servant—forget it!’ Bertha turned to check Lettie’s whereabouts before continuing. ‘Take Lettie now. She’d have started as a skivvy in a manor house like this when she was about twelve. Up at five in the morning, lighting fires, cleaning and blackleading the grates, carrying jugs of hot water to rooms, and most of the time scurrying around between the walls in that rabbit-run of a passage—’
‘Ahem.’ Dix cleared his throat loudly, reminding her that she was straying too close to the perilous reality of the present in her delineation of the unpleasant realities of the past.
‘Yes, well …’ Bertha veered sharply away from the dangerous corner. ‘You can keep the Golden Age. Give me the Forties—they were writing them better then. Look at Craig Rice, Frances and Richard Lockridge, Cornell Woolrich—’
‘Please—’ Wincing, Dix held up his hand to stop her. Silence had fallen on the surrounding tables and he raised his voice. ‘We needn’t go so far back. It would be churlish to except present company. I give you a toast.’ He rose and lifted his glass. ‘To the writers of today. In particular, to our gracious host and hostess, who have given us so much reading pleasure. To Evelina T. Carterslee and Bramwell Barbour!’
They all pushed back their chairs and lurched to their feet, repeating the names and waving their glasses in the air. Evelina and Bramwell remained seated, eyes modestly downcast.
Only Amaryllis Barbour seemed unhappy with the toast. She glanced around restlessly, as though she felt something were missing from it. Herself, perhaps. She was facing the doorway and suddenly she stiffened.
‘Oh no!’ she gasped.
Bramwell, rising to respond to the toast, followed his mother’s gaze and choked. One by one, the others turned, their hilarity spluttering into silence.
‘Well—’ Lauren Chandler advanced into the dining room, pouting. ‘I don’t think it was very polite of you to start the party without us.’
‘Miss Chandler—’ Reggie was the first to recover; he hurried to her side. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Oh yes.’ She looked at him vaguely. ‘My headache is all gone, so we decided to come down. We’d hate to miss anything. Has there been another murder yet?’
Someone caught his breath audibly, a woman half-sobbed. Lauren regarded the staring faces with mild disapproval.
‘We’re just serving dinner.’ Reggie looked towards Midge for support. ‘Let me find you a seat—’
‘Come and sit here, Lauren.’ Stanley Marric crowded his chair into Algie’s, causing a hasty reshuffle at his table. ‘Reggie will bring a chair.’
‘I’m not Lauren.’ She looked at him coldly. ‘I’m Brigid.’
‘Then you had switched name tags again,’ Haila Bond said. ‘Just as we suspected. It’s really Lauren who’s lying out there—’ She broke off abruptly, flushing.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The voice was colder than ever. ‘I’m Lauren.’
‘Holy Jeez!’ Marric said. ‘She’s flipped!’
