“Bravo,” Bruce Herbert said.
“Did you write that?” I asked her.
“Heavens, no, and I have no idea who did. I heard it once and…”
Count Antonio Zara, Marjorie’s brother-in-law, suddenly stood, cleared his throat, and said in a heavy accent, “As we all know, Italians are not noted for writing murder mysteries. Instead, we have devoted our creative energies to wine, fine food, and an appreciation of beautiful women. That I have married into this illustrious family, and sit at this table tonight, gives me distinct pleasure. I salute my British and American friends, and insist the next time this distinguished group gathers, it be at my villa on Capri.”
There was polite applause. He’d mentioned his villa on Capri many times that day, prompting Bruce Herbert to whisper to me, “His villa. Everything he has is the result of marrying Marjorie’s sister. He’s as phony as his title. ‘Count?’? He’s a handsome, oily gigolo who scored.”
Ona Ainsworth-Zara, the count’s wife and Marjorie’s sister, was, I judged, twelve to fifteen years younger than Marjorie. She was an attractive woman, regal in bearing, beautifully dressed, and adorned with an array of expensive jewelry. She’d kept to herself most of the day, probably because getting too close to her older and famous sister triggered razor-sharp barbs. I wondered at one point why Marjorie had bothered to invite her, and had my question answered when Bruce Herbert muttered, “The count and his lady have managed to infiltrate another party. Why Marjorie puts up with it is beyond me.”
I’d never met Ona before, and Marjorie had had little to say about her during our brief previous encounters. Although she’d never said anything overtly negative about Ona, there was always an edge to her voice when she brought her up, and I gathered that if there was not an outright estrangement, they certainly weren’t loving siblings. Strange, I thought as I sat at the table, that Marjorie had never married. I knew of no romantic interest in her long life, although one had to assume there were some flirtations along the way. Few people, even those committed to avoiding intimacy, successfully avoid it over a lifetime.
Marshall supervised the serving of dessert.
“Can we trust this?” Bruce Herbert asked. Marjorie, who’d been dozing, jerked awake and said in a strong voice, “Trust it? What in heaven’s name do you mean by that?”
Herbert laughed and said, “I’ve read at least a thousand murder mysteries, Marjorie, in which victims are poisoned by dishes that look like this.”
There was laughter at the table. Strayhorn, the critic, said, “I’d debate you on that, Mr. Herbert. I’d say the whiskey decanter has done more people in than syllabub.”
“Syllabub?” I said. “What’s that?”
Mrs. Semple said with a giggle, “Our answer to zabaglione.”
Her husband chimed in, “It goes back to Elizabethan times.”
“What’s in it?” I asked.
Mrs. Horton, who stood at the door to the kitchen, said, “Whipped cream, sherry, and lemon juice. They used to make it with warm cow’s milk.”
I looked at my hostess and said lightly, “You haven’t decided to poison us all with your syllabub, have you, Marjorie?”
She raised her head and moved her nose, as though a disagreeable odor had reached it. A tiny smile came to her lips as she said, “My dear Jessica, I must be slipping not to have thought of that. What a wonderful way to clear my decks before leaving.”
Laughter quickly dissipated as her final words sunk in.
“Whatever do you mean by saying ‘leaving’?” asked Archibald Semple.
“You know only too well what I mean, Archie. I don’t expect this dicky body to support me much longer.”
Clayton Perry laughed. “You’ll probably outlive us all,” he said.
“I doubt that,” remarked Jane Portelaine, sounding as though she meant it. No one challenged her. By now we were all too used to her depressing comments.
Bruce Herbert broke the tension by suggesting to Marjorie that it was time she did a cookbook. “Everyone else has,” he said. “There’s the Lord Peter Wimsey cookbook, and one of the best cookbooks I’ve ever seen-I use it all the time-is the Nero Wolfe cookbook.”
“Food is of no interest to me,” Marjorie said.
“It was to Agatha,” Strayhorn said. “Remember Funerals Are Fatal?”
That led into a new topic of discussion: food and the use of it as a vehicle to deliver lethal poisons. As the argument heated up, I looked down the table at the other guests. Looking every bit the contented land baron, was the producer of Who Killed Darby and Joan?, Sir James Ferguson. He was stocky, but not portly, and wore a beautiful tan tweed jacket, a maroon V-neck sweater, and a loosely woven brown tie. He was one of those people who seem to enjoy whatever they’re doing with a minimum of effort. He didn’t laugh much, but he was never without an amused smile on his handsome, ruddy face. As we all know, there are people in this world whom you immediately like, and Sir James Ferguson was one of them. I intended to find time for more conversation with him before the weekend was over.
The young man across from him was not one of those who instantly produce a positive reaction. His name was Jason Harris, and he defined “brooding young man.”
He’d arrived late Thursday night. I was in my room reading Gin and Daggers, and had come downstairs at about eleven o’clock to pour a small glass of port as a stomach-settling nightcap. Harris had just arrived and was in the library with Jane Portelaine. They were startled by my sudden appearance (it seems that everywhere I went in the manor I startled someone), but they quickly recovered. He was introduced to me by Jane as a writer whom Marjorie Ainsworth had taken under her wing.
“How wonderful,” I said, offering my hand, which, after some hesitation, he accepted. “My nephew, Grady Fletcher, is an aspiring writer, too.” The moment I said it I knew I should have left out the word “aspiring.” He glowered at me. He was too old to be viewed as aspiring to anything, just as one reaches a certain age when one can no longer refer to a companion of the opposite sex as “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.” He was handsome enough, a head of brown curls falling gently over his forehead and ears, a nicely sculptured face, square jaw, aquiline nose, and sensual, doelike brown eyes-bedroom eyes they were called in my youth. What was missing was a smile or, more correctly, the ability to smile. It went with being the struggling artist.
Oh well, I told myself as I asked a couple of questions of him and received answers that were little more than monosyllabic grunts.
My final question was “Are you currently working on a novel, Mr. Harris?”
Harris and Portelaine looked at each other. He said to me, “I have a work in progress.”
“Well,” I said, “I think I’ll take this splendid port upstairs with me and read one more chapter of Gin and Daggers. It’s remarkably good, don’t you think?” No answer. “Good night. It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Harris. I’m sure we’ll have time to talk tomorrow.”
As much as I tried to dismiss Jason Harris-to perceive him as simply amusing, as all such brooding young men are-I couldn’t, and I made a mental note to ask Marjorie about him. I read another chapter, then sat on a window seat and looked out over the gardens. There was a full moon; it was as though someone had turned on a floodlight to illuminate the beautiful plantings. One of my final thoughts before retiring was that besides being a weekend guest at Marjorie’s country home, I was a character in a murder mystery being written by her. The idea amused me, and I fell into a blissful sleep.
That thought came back to me as I sat at the dinner table and ate my syllabub, which, by the way, was absolutely delicious, although I have to admit that what had been said in jest about it had planted the idea of a foreign substance, arsenic perhaps, having been added to the ingredients. I laughed aloud as I thought it, which caused some of my table companions to look at me. I shook my head. “Just imagining what it would be like to be poisoned,” I said.