‘You have forgot Miss Pym.’
‘So I had. Miss Pym can be the stage manager and find costumes for us.’
‘I think I would like everyone to have a part,’ said Lord Harley.
‘Oh, dear, who can Miss Pym be?’
‘She is a respectable lady,’ said Lord Harley, ‘to whom Captain Seaton once promised marriage, but instead he ruined her after having spent all her savings.’
Emily jumped up and down and clapped her hands. ‘Oh, famous! When can we begin to write our play?’
‘Just as soon as we have done the bedchambers. We will then go to the kitchen and tell the others.’
Hannah’s odd eyes gleamed green when she heard about the proposed play. A bit of fun was what was needed to bring Mrs Bisley out of her worries about her predicament. Besides, what of Lord Harley and Miss Freemantle? Emily’s eyes were shining and Lord Harley was looking at her with indulgent amusement.
The landlord, appealed to, produced sheets of paper. Emily was excused from kitchen duties, and she and Lord Harley retreated to the coffee-room hearth. The rest of the travellers, even Captain Seaton, were highly delighted at the idea of the play.
Mr Burridge and Mr Hendry elected to set up the end of the coffee room as a stage. It was decided that everyone should wear whatever clothes that seemed appropriate for the part.
Emily began to write busily in a clear hand and Lord Harley copied down what she had written on to different sheets of paper. The whole play or playlet was only to last for about twenty minutes. Captain Seaton said he had a gun. He would point it, unloaded, of course, as someone fired a gun off-stage to produce the desired effect. As he wrote busily, Lord Harley wondered if Emily realized that she had written a touching end to the play where brave Jack clasps the heroine in his arms and kisses her. He thought ruefully that she was probably imagining this fellow Peregrine in the role.
Then it was discovered that the coachman could not read and that even Mrs Bradley was going to have difficulty with the words, but that was solved when it was agreed on that they should make up appropriate lines for themselves.
It was a merry dinner with everyone eating and trying to memorize lines and discussing what they would wear. Even Mrs Silvers put in an appearance, saying, despite her rosy cheeks and air of good country health, that she had forced herself from her sick-bed just to see the play.
It was only when the play began that the exasperated Emily, cast in the role of Lady Gwendoline, realized that her fellow players were determined to play their roles in their own way. Brave Jack was played by Lord Harley as a mincing fop to great effect. The audience of the landlord and his wife were laughing heartily. Then the coachman, elated by his first appearance on the boards, made a long speech about the life of a coachman, the guard told him not to be such an old windbag, the coachman threw up his fists and said he would draw his cork, and Lord Harley, briefly dropping his role of fop, had to separate them. Hannah Pym, remembering the deception of that under-butler, began to berate Captain Seaton in very convincing tones and with such fire and passion that the landlord leaped to his feet and shouted, ‘Huzzah!’
Mrs Bradley then burst into speech, telling the company how she had nursed Lady Gwendoline from a babe. The short play began to show alarming signs of running as long as any Haymarket tragedy.
Captain Seaton made a good villain. He had placed a black patch over one eye and leered and cursed with great aplomb. ‘You will return with me,’ he roared, brandishing the gun. Mr Burridge slipped ‘off-stage’, ready to fire his own gun harmlessly out of the coffee-room window into the snow to make it sound as if the captain had actually fired his own.
Emily looked at the captain in startled amazement. Why would no one keep to the script? Instead of pointing the gun at herself and her ‘mother’, he was pointing it straight at Mr Fletcher.
‘I will kill you all,’ he snarled. Hannah was also watching. In a flash, as Captain Seaton pressed the trigger, Hannah seized a heavy pewter tray and held it up in front of Mr Fletcher. There was a deafening report and Hannah’s hands jerked as a bullet struck the tray and ricocheted off it to bury itself harmlessly in a beam in the ceiling of the coffee room.
Lord Harley snatched the gun from Captain Seaton and muttered, ‘Get to your room. I shall speak to you shortly.’
‘But I didn’t know,’ blustered the captain. ‘Someone’s playing a sore trick on me.’
‘Go!’ ordered Lord Harley, and Captain Seaton went. Lord Harley said to Hannah, ‘Are you all right?’
Hannah nodded, her eyes dancing. ‘Another adventure,’ she hissed. ‘Go on with the play.’
The others seemed so stage-struck, so determined to play their parts, that Hannah was sure very few of them had noticed the shooting. Mr Fletcher made his speech about the forged will. Lizzie curtsied and thanked him most affectingly, and then Mr Fletcher startled everyone by stepping out of his role and clasping Lizzie to his bosom. They stood like that, gazing into each other’s eyes, until Hannah coughed loudly and the couple broke apart.
Lizzie turned to Brave Jack. ‘And to you, sir,’ she said, leading Emily forward, ‘I give my daughter.’
Lord Harley smiled down into Emily’s suddenly frightened eyes. ‘Forgot it was me, didn’t you?’ he whispered. He took her in his arms and kissed her, quick and hard, on the lips. The cast applauded themselves, and the landlord and his wife applauded the cast. Emily was shaken. That kiss had burnt, had branded, had caused an upheaval of her senses. Then she recollected that shot. She clutched Lord Harley’s sleeve. ‘What are we to do about Captain Seaton? He tried to murder poor Mr Fletcher.’
‘Keep your voice down,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘We do not want to alarm the others. Miss Pym knows, but she is keeping quiet.’
Lord Harley went quickly up the stairs to where the captain was sitting sulkily on his unmade bed.
‘Well, Seaton?’ demanded Lord Harley, ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘I do not know what happened, my lord,’ said the captain truculently, ‘and that’s the truth. I practised with that gun before dinner and Mr Burridge agreed to fire his own out of the coffee-room window. My gun was not loaded, I swear.’
Lord Harley looked at him with loathing. ‘You have brought this on yourself. You will leave Mrs Bisley and Mr Fletcher alone, do you hear? If you so much as approach either one of them again, I will shoot you myself.’
Captain Seaton got to his feet, his fists swinging. ‘And I am going to teach you a lesson, me fine buck.’
He lunged at Lord Harley, who dodged the blow and then struck Captain Seaton a smashing punch on the chin with his full weight behind it. The captain fell backwards on the bed.
‘I will say it once more,’ said Lord Harley. ‘Do not go near either Fletcher or Mrs Bisley again, or it will be the worse for you.’ And, nursing his bruised knuckles, he made his way downstairs.
He found Hannah in the kitchen. The rest were still in the coffee room celebrating the success of the play.
‘Did you talk to the captain?’ asked Hannah.
‘Yes,’ he said, rubbing his knuckles. ‘What a nasty fool that man is. How could he hope to get away with it?’
‘It might have been hard to prove murder,’ said Hannah. ‘All he had to do was swear he did not know the gun was primed.’
‘We must keep a close watch on the captain. What are you doing now?’
‘I am preparing a cold collation for supper.’
‘You appear to have been deserted by your helpers.’
‘Leave them for the moment,’ said Hannah. ‘I think, however, that we should keep them busy with amusements. If all they are going to do is sit around the coffee-room fire and drink, quarrels are bound to arise. Satan will always find mischief for idle hands.’