Her face, if it were possible, went even whiter.
“Oh, no!” she said. “He mustn’t ask her that. She has a bee in her bonnet about charities—dead set against them. Something from her childhood, I think. You’d best tell him that before he brings it up. Otherwise, there’s sure to be a most god-awful scene!”
The vicar was coming back up the stairs, surprisingly, taking them two at a time.
“Sit back, dear lady, and close your eyes,” he said in a soothing voice I hadn’t heard before.
“Miss Keats says Miss Wyvern is indisposed,” I told him, as he applied the compress to her brow. “So perhaps we’d better not mention—”
“Of course. Of course,” the vicar said.
I would invent some harmless excuse later.
A voice behind me said, “Bun? What on earth …?”
I spun round.
Phyllis Wyvern, dressed in an orchid-colored lounging outfit and looking as fit as all the fiddles in the London Philharmonic, was wafting along the corridor towards us.
“She’s suffering a migraine, Miss Wyvern,” the vicar said. “I’ve just fetched a compress …”
“Bun? Oh, my poor Bun!”
Bun gave a little moan.
Phyllis Wyvern snatched the compress away from the vicar and reapplied it with her own hands to Bun’s temples.
“Oh, my poor, dearest Bun. Tell Philly where it hurts.”
Bun rolled her eyes.
“Marion!” Phyllis Wyvern called, snapping her fingers, and a tall, striking woman in horn-rimmed glasses, who must once have been a great beauty, appeared as if from nowhere.
“Take Bun to her room. Tell Dogger to summon a doctor at once.”
As Bun Keats was led away, Phyllis Wyvern stuck out her hand.
“I’m Phyllis Wyvern, Vicar,” she said, clasping his hand in both of hers and giving it a little caress. “Thank you for your prompt attention. This has been a trying day all round: first poor Patrick McNulty, and now my dearest Bun. It’s most distressing—we’re all such a large, happy family, you know.”
I had a quick flash of déjà vu: Somewhere I’d seen this moment before.
Of course I had! It could have been a scene from any one of Phyllis Wyvern’s films.
“I am in your debt, Vicar,” she was saying. “If you hadn’t happened along, she might have taken a bad tumble on the stairs.”
She was dramatizing the situation: That wasn’t the way it had happened at all.
“If ever there’s anything I can do to show my gratitude, you’ve only to ask.”
And then it all came tumbling out of the vicar’s mouth—at least most of it. Fortunately he didn’t mention Cynthia’s coaching lessons.
“So you see, Miss Wyvern,” he finished up, “the roof has been more or less at risk since George the Fourth, and time is now of the essence. The verger tells me he’s been finding water in the font, of late, that wasn’t placed there for ecclesiastical purposes, and—”
Phyllis Wyvern touched his arm.
“Not another word, Vicar. I’d be happy to roll up my sleeves and pitch in. I’ll tell you what; I’ve just had the most marvelous idea. My co-star, Desmond Duncan, will be arriving this evening. You may recall that Desmond and I had some small success both in the West End and on film with our Romeo and Juliet. If Desmond’s game—and I’m sure he will be …”
She said this with a naughty wink and a twinkle.
“… then surely we shall be able to cobble something together to keep St. Tancred’s roof from caving in.”
• FIVE •
I’D BEEN SPENDING SO much time sitting halfway down the stairs that I was beginning to feel like Christopher Robin.
That’s where I was now, looking out across the crowded foyer, where several dozen of the film crew were gathered in little knots, talking. The only one I recognized was the woman called Marion, who had led Bun Keats away in the afternoon. Since Bun was nowhere in sight, I guessed she was still resting in her room.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” someone called out, clapping their hands for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen!”
The buzz of conversation stopped as abruptly as if it had been cut off with scissors.
A pale young man with sandy hair had made his way to the bottom of the staircase, climbed up a couple of steps, and turned to face the others.
“Mr. Lampman will address you now.”
A few discreet lights were brought up to compensate for Buckshaw’s antiquated electrical system.
From somewhere in the shadows behind them, a tiny middle-aged man made his appearance and, like a boy on a country road, strolled slowly and casually across the foyer as if he had all the time in the world. He was dressed, from the top down, in a rather battered olive-green fedora hat, a black roll-neck sweater, and black slacks.
In a different costume, Val Lampman might have passed for a leprechaun.
He turned and faced the others. I noticed that he didn’t ascend even one of the stairs.
“It’s nice to see so many of the old familiar faces—and a few new ones as well,” he said. “Among the latter is Tom Christie, our assistant director—”
He stopped to put his hand on the shoulder of a curly-haired man who had now come over to join him.
“—who will be seeing that everyone is zipped up and that none of you walk into walls.”
A small but polite laugh went up.
“As most of you know by now, we’re embarking under a bit of a handicap. Pat McNulty has suffered an unfortunate injury, and although I’m assured that he’s going to be all right, we’re just going to have to get on without his benevolent mother hen tactics, at least for the time being.
“Ben Latshaw will be in charge of technical crew until further notice, and I know you’ll extend him every courtesy.”
Heads swiveled, but I couldn’t see who they were looking at.
“I’d hoped to have a read-through of the first scene with Miss Wyvern and Mr. Duncan, but as he’s not arrived yet, we’ll substitute scene forty-two with the maid and the postman. Where are the maid and the postman? Ah! Jeannette and Clifford—good show. See Miss Trodd, and we’ll meet upstairs as soon as we’re finished here.”
Jeannette and Clifford made their way across the foyer towards the horn-rimmed Marion, who waved a clipboard in the air to guide them through the throng.
Marion Trodd—so that was her name.
“Val, darling! Sorry I’m late.”
The voice rang out like a crystal trumpet, bouncing from the polished paneling of the foyer.
Everyone turned to watch Phyllis Wyvern begin her descent from the landing of the west staircase. And what a descent it was: She had changed into a Mexican dancer’s costume: white frilled blouse and a skirt like the canopy of a seaside roundabout.
The only thing missing was a banana in her hair.
There was a smattering of light applause and a single wolf whistle at which she pretended to blush, fanning her cheeks with her hand.
She must be freezing in those short sleeves, I thought. Perhaps working under hot lights had made her immune to the English winter.
She paused once, to give a helpless little shrug and point her chin to the upper reaches of the house.
“Poor, dear Bun,” she said, in a suddenly solemn voice—a voice meant to carry. “I tried to get some soup into her, but she couldn’t keep it down. I’ve given her something to help her sleep.”
Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, she floated across the foyer, seized Val Lampman’s forearms, as if to keep him from touching her, and pecked at his cheek.
Even from where I sat, I could see that she missed him by a mile. She looked a little peeved, I thought, that he had stolen her thunder.
As they held each other at arm’s length, the front door opened and Desmond Duncan made his entry.
“Sorry, all,” he said in that voice of his that was known round the world. “Last matinee at the pantos. Command performance. Simply couldn’t bear to tear myself away from the poor dears.”