He walked back down the corridor. The door next to the bathroom was open, with the light switched on. It was a drying room, with washing machine and tumble dryer, and a clothes-horse. On which there were several pairs of underpants.
55. Discovered
As he peered into the Todds’ drying room, Bruce felt more than the normal curiosity (mild in the case of most) which we feel 142
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when we look into the drying rooms of others. After all, a drying room is hardly Chapman’s Homer . . . nor is it a peak in Darien.
This drying room, in fact, was of little interest, apart from the fact that there were at least four pairs of underpants on the clothes-horse and Bruce was conscious of the fact that social embarrassment might await him at the ball in his current state of incomplete dress. A simple solution would be to borrow – and it would just be borrowing – a pair of these underpants, obviously Todd’s, slip into them when some suitable opportunity presented itself at the ball, and then return them, laundered, a few days later. This would not be theft; it would be borrowing of an entirely understandable and justifiable sort.
Of course the means of return would have to be considered.
Borrowed items could normally be returned openly, but those that were borrowed informally, or borrowed with implicit consent, might have to be returned in a more discreet way. The clothing could be put into the post, perhaps, with an anonymous thank-you note – or with one signed in an illegible hand – or it might just be slipped into Todd’s in-tray in the office when nobody was looking.
Bruce looked over his shoulder. The corridor was quite empty and he could hear the murmur of conversation coming from the drawing room. It was highly unlikely, he thought, that anybody would come this way: they were waiting for him to return before setting off for the Braid Hills Hotel. He could take as long as he liked, and be quite safe.
He stepped forward into the drying room and reached for a pair of underpants from the clothes-horse. As he did so, he saw that the pair which he had chosen had a large hole in the seat; how mean of Todd! It was typical of him – he was mean with stationery supplies in the office and he was always going on about keeping costs down.
So he applied that philosophy to his clothing as well!
Bruce replaced the rejected pair of underpants on the clothes-horse and reached for another pair. This was better. Although the garment was certainly too large, the elastic would hold it in place. So he quickly folded the pants, stuffed them into his sporran and turned to go back out into the corridor.
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He stopped. There, standing in the doorway, was Todd, an empty whisky glass in his hand.
Bruce swallowed. “Todd,” he said, in strangled tones.
“Todd.”
Todd was staring at him, and Bruce noticed, for the first time, how the whites of his eyes were unnaturally large.
“Yes,” he said.
Bruce swallowed again. “Well, I’m more or less ready to go,”
he said. “We don’t want to keep people.”
Todd blinked. “The bathroom is further along,” he said. “This is the drying room.”
Bruce laughed. “Oh, I found the bathroom all right,” he said airily. “I took a wrong turning on the way back and ended up . . .” He paused, and then gestured around the drying room,
“here. I ended up in here.”
Todd moved back from the doorway in order to allow Bruce to come out into the corridor. “A rather odd mistake to make,”
he said. “After all, this is not a particularly confusing house. The corridor runs fairly straight, wouldn’t you say? It goes up there, and then comes back. Frankly, I don’t see how one can get lost in this house.”
Bruce smiled. “I have a very bad sense of direction,” he said quickly. “Terrible, in fact.”
Todd said nothing, and so Bruce, forcing the best smile he could manage, began to walk back down the corridor towards the drawing room. His insouciance was misleading; the encounter had been deeply embarrassing. It was bad enough to be found in the drying room, but he wondered whether Todd had seen him pocket, or sporran, the underpants. Would he have said anything, had he seen him? The answer to that was far from obvious. If he had seen him, then one could only speculate as to what he would have thought. Presumably he would have thought of him as being one of those unfortunate people who steal the clothing of others for reasons too dark, too impenetrable, to discuss. That would be so unjust: the thought that he might harbour a trait of that sort was inconceivable. After all, he was a rugby enthusiast, a recently-admitted member of the Royal Institution of Chartered
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Surveyors, and . . . It was difficult to put one’s finger on other badges of respectability, but they were certainly there.
Well, there was nothing that he could do about it. What did it matter if Todd thought that of him? He reached the drawing room before he managed to provide himself with an answer to that question.
“Bruce got lost,” said Todd in a loud voice, behind him. “He ended up in the drying room.”
Sasha, who had been talking to Lizzie, looked up in surprise.
“Lost in our house?” she exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”
“I took a wrong turning,” said Bruce. He turned to look reproachfully at Todd. A host had no excuse to embarrass a guest like this, even if the host was the guest’s boss.
“Very strange,” said Lizzie, looking coolly at Bruce. “So you ended up among all the family underwear?”
Sasha’s head swung round sharply, and Lizzie found herself fixed with a hostile stare from her mother. Bruce, who was now blushing noticeably, turned to look out of the window.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.
56. At the Braid Hills Hotel
“The nice thing about this job,” observed the functions manager of the Braid Hills Hotel, “is that it has its surprises.”
His assistant, surveying the room in which the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball was to be held, nodded his agreement. The room, although well-decorated with several sprays of flowers, had only two tables, one with four chairs around it and one with two. And even if the hotel had fielded its best napery – starched and folded to perfection – and chosen bright red glassware – there was a distinctly desolate feel to the almost-empty room.
“You’d think that they would have sold just a few more tickets,” said the assistant, adding, “in an area like this.”
The manager shrugged. “I’m sure that they did their best.
Still, I cannot understand why they’ve insisted on keeping the tables apart. Surely it would have been much better for all six of them to sit together – somehow less embarrassing.”
When Sasha had called round earlier that day to review arrangements, he had suggested to her that the tables be put together, but she had firmly refused.
“I wouldn’t mind in the least,” she said. “But my husband has views on the matter.”
So the tables had remained apart, and they were still apart when the first guests, Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton, arrived in the hotel bar, several minutes before the arrival of the Todd party.
Ramsey Dunbarton was a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was only now beginning to stoop slightly. He thought of himself as being slightly on the Bohemian side, and had been a stalwart of amateur dramatic circles and the Savoy Opera Group.
On more than one occasion he had appeared on the stage of the Churchhill Theatre, most notably – and this was the height of his stage career – as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers.