Fork raised, a bit of salmon pastry caught on its tines, Mrs Sweeney continued. 'My dear, the entire cast was simply thrilled with your photographs. Dare we hope to make it a yearly event?' She was speaking to Deborah, who sat on Lynley's right at the head of the table. 'Just think of it. An annual collection of photographs with our own Lord Asherton. In a different costume every time.' She trilled a little laugh. 'The actors, I mean. Of course. Not Lord Asherton.'
'But why not Tommy in costume as well?' Lady Helen said. 'I think it's high time he joined the Nanrunnel Players and stopped hiding his talent under a bushel.'
'Oh, we could hardly dare to hope or to think…' Mr Sweeney tore his attention from his wife's cleavage long enough to take up this thought.
'I can just see it,' Sidney laughed. 'Tommy as Petruchio.'
'I've told him time and again it was a mistake to read history at Oxford,' Lady Helen said. 'He's always had a flair for the stage. Haven't you, Tommy darling?'
'Might we really …?' Mr Sweeney faltered, caught between the obvious teasing of Lynley's friends and his own unspoken hope that there might be a margin of reality behind Lady Helen's words. He said, as if it were a possible inducement to Lynley's becoming one of the local thespians, 'We have so often asked Dr Trenarrow to join us under the lights.'
'A pleasure I must avoid,' Trenarrow said.
'And those you don't avoid?'
Peter Lynley asked the question, winking round the table in a manner that suggested skeletons were about to leap out of the cupboards while the dead came springing back to life. He poured more of the white burgundy into his wineglass and did the same for Sasha. Both of them drank. Sasha smiled down at her plate as if enjoying a secret joke. Neither of them had touched their salmon.
A brief hiatus came upon the conversation. Trenarrow broke it. 'High blood pressure keeps me from many pleasures, I'm afraid. Such are the failings of middle age.'
'You don't have the look of a man who has failings,' Justin Brooke said. He and Sidney had twined their hands on the table top. St James wondered how either of them was managing to eat.
'We all have failings,' Trenarrow replied. 'Some of us are fortunate in that we manage to keep them better hidden than others. But we all of us have them. It's the way of the world.'
Hodge, assisted by two of the dailies who had been induced to stay into the evening, emerged from the warming room as Dr Trenarrow spoke. The introduction of a second course arrested attention. If Peter Lynley had sought the embarrassment of others with his sly question, food proved to be eminently more interesting to the assembled group.
'You're not sealing Wheal Maen!' The exclamation rose like a wail, emitted from Lady Augusta, Lynley's maiden aunt. His father's sister had always maintained a proprietary interest and watchful eye over Howenstow. As she spoke, she cast a look of outrage upon John Penellin on her right, who remained detached from the conversation.
St James had been surprised to see Penellin among the guests. Surely a death in the family would have been excuse enough to allow him to beg off a dinner party in which he appeared to have little interest. The estate manager had spoken less than ten words during drinks in the hall, spending most of the time standing at the window and gazing gravely in the direction of the lodge. However, from what he had seen and heard last night, St James knew that Penellin had no love for his son-in-law. So perhaps it was his indifference to Mick Cambrey which prompted him to take part in the gathering. Or perhaps it was an act of loyalty to the Lynleys. Or a behaviour he wished to be seen as such.
Lady Augusta was continuing. She was a woman well skilled in the art of dinner-table dialogue, devoting half her time to the right, the other to the left, and throwing a remark right down the centre whenever she deemed it appropriate. 'It's bad enough that Wheal Maen must be closed. But cows were actually grazing in the park when I arrived! Good heavens, I couldn't believe my eyes. My father must be spinning in his grave. I don't understand the reason, Mr Penellin.'
Penellin looked up from his wineglass. 'The mine's too close to the road. The main shaft's flooded. It's safer to seal it.'
'Piffle!' Lady Augusta proclaimed. 'Those mines are individual works of art. You know as well as I that at least two of our mines have beam-engines that are perfectly intact. People want to see that sort of thing, you know. People pay to see it.'
'Guided tours, Aunt?' Lynley asked.
'Just the thing!'
'With everyone wearing those wonderful Cyclops hats with little torches attached to their foreheads,' Lady Helen said.
'Yes, of course.' Lady Augusta rapped the table sharply with her fork. 'We don't want the Trust here, sniffing round for another Lanhydrock, putting everyone out of house and home, do we? Do we?' She gave a quick nod, accepting no response as agreement. 'Quite. We don't. But what other way do we have of avoiding those little beasts than by dealing with the tourist trade ourselves, my dears? We must make repairs, we must open the mines, we must allow tours. Children love tours. They'll be wild to go down. They'll give their parents no peace until they've had a look.'
'It's an interesting idea,' Lynley said. 'But I'll only consider it on one condition.'
'What's that, Tommy dear?'
'That you run the tea shop.' 'That I…' Her mouth closed abrupdy. 'In a white cap,' Lynley went on. 'Dressed as a milkmaid.'
Lady Augusta pressed against the back of her chair and laughed with the heartiness of a woman who knew she'd been bested, if only for the moment. 'You naughty boy,' she said and dipped into her soup.
Conversation ebbed and flowed through the remainder of the meal. St James caught only snatches here and there. Lady Asherton and Cotter talking about a large brass charger, caparisoned and prancing, that hung on the room's east wall; Lady Helen relating to Dr Trenarrow an amusing tale of mistaken identity at a long-ago house-party attended by her father; Justin Brooke and Sidney laughing together over a remark Lady Augusta made about Lynley's childhood; the Plymouth MP and Mrs Sweeney wandering in a maze of confusion in which he discussed the need for economic development and she responded with a dreamy reverie about bringing the film industry to Cornwall apparently in order to feature herself in a starring role; Mr Sweeney – when his eyes were not feasting upon his spouse – murmuring vague responses to the MP's wife who was speaking about each of her grandchildren in turn. Only Peter and Sasha kept their voices low, their heads together, their attention on each other.
Thus the company moved smoothly towards the end of the meal. This was heralded by the presentation of the pudding, a flaming concoction that looked as if its intended purpose was to conclude the dinner by means of a conflagration. When it had been duly served and devoured, Lynley got to his feet. He brushed back his hair in a boyish gesture.
'You know this already,' he said. 'But I'd like to make it official tonight by saying that Deborah and I shall marry in December.' He touched her bright hair lighdy as a murmur of congratulations rose and fell. 'What you don't know, however, because we only decided late this afternoon, is that we'll be coming home permanently to Cornwall then. To make our life here – have our children grow up here – with you.'
It was an announcement which, considering the reaction, no-one had been prepared to hear. Least of all had St James expected it. He had an impression only of a general cry of surprise and then a series of images played quickly before him: Lady Asherton saying her son's name and nothing more; Trenarrow turning abruptly to Lynley's mother; Deborah pressing her cheek to Lynley's hand in a movement so quick it might have gone unnoticed; and then Cotter studying St James with an expression whose meaning was unmistakable. He's expected this all along, St James thought.