He really is a pet, thought Priscilla. Mummy and Daddy are so pleased. It’s nice to do the right thing for once. Poor Hamish. I do hope he won’t feel the snub too painfully.
At that moment, Hamish was leaning on his garden gate outside the police station, enjoying the quiet evening. His slavering pet mongrel, Towser, as usual, had flopped down to sleep across his master’s boots. Behind Hamish, from the back of the police station, came the mournful clucking of the hens.
The only thing that worried him was where to find a dinner jacket for the party. He had quickly recovered from the shock of Priscilla’s engagement. Hamish had long ago discovered that it was easier to tuck painful things he could do nothing about at the present away into a far corner of his brain until such time as he could take some action.
He did not know the Halburton-Smythes had written to him not to come. Jessie, their dizzy housemaid, was walking out with Geordie, the baker’s boy, and had met her swain only five yards from the police station. The encounter had made her forget the reason for her having been sent to the village. The housekeeper, Mrs Wilson, had told her to buy a packet of soap powder when she was down in the village, and Jessie remembered only that request. She did not find the note, undelivered, still in her apron pocket until two days later.
∨ Death of a Cad ∧
3
Keep your place and silent be,
Game can hear and game can see.
—mark beaufoy.
The members of the house party, with the exception of the guest of honour, Henry Withering, and his fiancée, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, looked rather jaded when they gathered in the dining room of the castle on the following evening for the buffet supper.
Jeremy Pomfret appeared looking like a dissipated cherub, with blue circles under his eyes. His room and Peter’s had originally been one triangular-shaped room. It had been converted into two by a wall of thin plasterboard, and the bathroom had been installed to cut across the point of the triangle. Jeremy’s sleep had been disturbed by sounds of noisy love-making coming from Peter’s room all night long. There had also been a lot of toing and froing, and it had sounded as if the gallant captain had been entertaining more than one lady during the night.
The beginnings of a very deep hatred for Peter Bartlett had begun to burn in Jeremy’s old–fashioned, fastidious soul. That hatred had leaped into a flame that very evening, when Jeremy had gone into the bathroom to wash and shave before dinner. There were sopping-wet towels lying all over the floor, and there was a stomach-churning ring of hair round the bathtub, showing that Captain Peter Bartlett had shaved while he was having his bath.
“Filthy beast,” raged Jeremy, glowering at Peter across the room. The captain, lean, handsome, beautifully tailored, was being fawned on by Vera, Jessica, and Diana. How can any woman even tolerate being near the man? thought Jeremy. Tomorrow was the Glorious Twelfth, and Peter had still not yet said at what time he would be going out. It was not as if Jeremy could ask the servants; since it was only the pair of them, there were to be no loaders or beaters or even dogs.
Also looking the worse for wear were Lord and Lady Helmsdale. Both wore men’s pyjamas in bed, and they had discovered last night that someone had poured glue into the crotch of each pair. They had spent hours trying to get the offending mess off the embarrassing places it had stuck to. They both blamed the captain.
Sir Humphrey Throgmorton sat listlessly in a corner. He never slept very well anyway. Prunella Smythe had stayed awake most of the night in a stagestruck fever of excitement. Freddy Forbes-Grant had been awakened by his wife’s getting out of bed at two in the morning, saying she was going down to the kitchens to get a glass of milk. When she had not returned by three, he became anxious and went in search of her. When he had given up the search and returned to the bedroom, it was to find Vera once more in bed and fast asleep. He wondered what she had been up to, and that wonder had kept him awake and in a nasty temper until dawn.
Colonel and Mrs Halburton-Smythe had sat up very late debating whether their daughter actually meant to marry this splendid catch or whether she would change her mind. She had resisted their best efforts and had turned down so many eligibles that they found it hard to believe she meant to meet this one at the altar. They also planned to tell the captain to leave immediately after he had bagged his brace, but as they were both frightened of Peter Bartlett’s erratic bouts of vicious temper, each wanted the other to give the captain his marching orders. They had never entertained him as a house guest before and had not realized until now the full horror of the captain’s behaviour. They at last settled on that well-worn ruse employed by the landed gentry for speeding the unwelcome guest on his way – placing a railway timetable beside his bed with the soonest, fastest train underlined in red, and instructing the housekeeper to pack his case and leave it in the hall.
Whatever had put the shadows under the eyes of both Diana and Jessica, they were hugging to themselves, occasionally casting triumphant looks at each other, and then turning away puzzled, each obviously wondering what the other had to look triumphant about.
As well as the members of the house party, there was a sprinkling of local notables, now clustered about Henry, asking for his autograph and laughing at his slightest joke.
Priscilla was proud of Henry. He was so good-natured, so likeable, and so much at ease that all her doubts about their engagement had been laid to rest.
He had appeared during the day in respectably worn casual clothes and was now dressed in a beautifully tailored dinner jacket, the only relic of his past reputation for bohemianism being a pink-striped frilled shirt.
And then she looked across the dining room – it was the only large room in the castle, which was why it was being used for the party – and witnessed the full glory of the arrival of PC Macbeth.
Priscilla stifled a sharp exclamation of dismay and crossed the room to join him.
“Hamish,” she hissed, “where on earth did you get that frightful dinner jacket from?”
“It’s a wee bit on the short side,” admitted Hamish ruefully, looking down at his long, lanky figure. “But wee Archie was the only waiter at the Loch-dubh Hotel who was off duty tonight.”
The dinner jacket hung loosely on him and the sleeves only came three-quarters of the way down his arms, and his trousers were exposing a long length of woolly plaid sock.
“Come with me quickly,” urged Priscilla. “Uncle Harry often leaves some of his gear here, and he’s tall and thin. Mummy’s glaring already.”
Uncle Harry was Mr Paul Halburton, Mary Halburton-Smythe’s brother, an archaeologist who travelled far and wide with the minimum of baggage and who always left most of his wardrobe behind at Tommel Castle after one of his flying visits. The Halburton-Smythes had double-barrelled their name after their marriage.
Priscilla led Hamish quickly from the room before her mother could reach her.
Upstairs, in a cell-like room at the top of the castle, Priscilla rummaged through her Uncle Harry’s wardrobe until she found a respectable dinner jacket and trousers. “Put these on immediately, Hamish,” she said. “You can hand them back tomorrow. I’ll parcel up Archie’s clothes and put the parcel in the hall and you can pick it up when you leave. Didn’t you get my parents’ message telling you not to come?”