High on the wall by the pantry door, the old bell tinkled in its desultory fashion, announcing a caller at the front door.
Wondering who that could be since the few people with whom she was acquainted would know that she'd be in the kitchen this time of day, Amy half ran to the front hall, wiping her hands as she went and pulling fussily at her jumper, aware that it was jelly-sticky. She gave the door the hefty yank it required and discovered Sally's mother about to use the huge clumsy knocker.
"Good heavens, Mrs. Landon…"
"I'm terribly sorry to keep you standing on the stoop, Mrs. Merrion…"
"I can't thank you enough for minding Sally…"
"No bother. Such a nasty day, the girls have been playing dress-up."
In mutual accord, the two women crossed the square front hall to the stairs. Above them some charade was in progress: they could hear Sally announcing dire news in a loud and affected voice.
"Sally dear, it's Mummie come to collect you."
"Oh, Mummie, did you have to come just now?"
Amy and Mrs. Merrion exchanged amused glances at the distressed wail of protest. As they looked up. Sally was leaning over the upper balustrade, her face framed by a gauzy blue, the folds of heavy blue sleeves falling to cover her hands on the railing.
"I'm just denouncing the traitor in our midst who was de… dee… what did you say he was doing to us, Fran?" Sally turned her head and nearly lost the heavy headdress.
"Sally love" - Mrs. Merrion's voice was patient and level - "I've got to pick up the meat for tea and your father from the station. There's only just time to get to Mr. Suttle's before…"
"Oh, Mummie…" Sally's tone was piteous, and undoubtedly tears were being repressed.
Amy heard Fran's soothing voice, to which she added her own assurance that Sally could return very soon and continue the game.
"It just won't be the same…" Sally's voice ended on a petulant high note.
The women saw a swish of royal blue shirts, which told them that Sally was submitting to the inevitable.
"Fran love, would you put the things away for Sally since she has to leave now?"
"Yes, Mummie. Come on now, Marjorie, you can help…"
Marjorie blubbered a protest, evoking her privilege as the youngest in the family.
"If you're big enough to be a lady-in-waiting, you're big enough to help," Fran said in such an imitation of an adult that Amy and Mrs. Merrion grinned at each other.
Sally's stiff-legged descent of the stairs reminded them of that young lady's disgruntlement well before they could see her scowling face. Amy gathered up Sally's school mac and book bag, quickly deciding that the dirtier of the two school scarves was not Fran's, and prepared to speed the parting guest.
Sally allowed herself to be helped into her coat, but her seething resentment dissipated as she babbled to her mother that Mrs. Landon had smashing things to play dress-up in, Mummie, and when could she come again please, and thank you Mrs. Landon for the tea and Mummie didn't you have to go to the dentist again soon?
Mrs. Merrion, amused by her daughter's effusiveness, smiled and said all the properly courteous things as she hurried Sally across the square hall and out the door. As Amy waited politely on the steps while the Merrions' green shooting brake was bucking down the pebbled drive, she began to wonder at Sally's unexpected enthusiasm. What on earth had the girls managed to find in the "smashing" category in that blanket chest? What else was in it? Suits of Peter's that she'd put by for his son, the odd blanket or two, a few drapes, some outgrown things of Patricia's, party dresses of hers that she would be unlikely to wear in Dorset, several lengths of fabric. Nothing royal blue in the lot! And she'd never had any occasion to use gauze. Nor headdresses. As far as she could remember, there'd been nothing left behind in the box room by the previous owners, the unfortunate Alderdyces.
"Mum, the milk!" Peter shouted through the pantry door. "Do put everything back, Fran, won't you?" Amy paused long enough in the stairwell to hear her daughter's assurance before she returned to the kitchen and an urgent affair of pasteurization.
At supper that night, when Marjorie was safely in bed, Amy remembered the royal blue puzzle. "Fran, pet, how did you get on as ladies-in-waiting?" "Oh, Mummie," and Fran's face glowed unexpectedly, "we had a super time. Marjorie was in the red wool though we had to pull the skirt up over the belt so she wouldn't trip. She was the junior lady-in-waiting and carried Sally's train. Sally was queen because she was guest, so she had the blue because blue is a royal color. Isn't it?" Peter had guffawed so Fran turned wide serious eyes on her brother. "Sally said it was…" ("To be sure, it is, Fran pet," Amy reassured her, glaring at Peter.) "… So that left the green for me. But I think the green was for a man… because it only came to my knees. Marjorie's and Sally's dresses dragged on the floor…"
"Red? Green? What green?" Amy was mystified.
"Green… sort of velvet stuff, I think, and it went from here to here"-Fran measured the length on her small body-"and there was fur along the collar and no buttons so I used another belt…"
"I don't recall putting away any belts…"
"The fancy dress ones, Mummie, with the belt buckles and sparkly stones…"
Fran's pleasure was fading fast in the face of possible maternal disapproval, and her voice wavered as her eyes sought her mother's.
"Oh, those!" Amy said as if her memory had been at fault. "Those old things. I'd forgotten about them."
"I don't remember you and Father going to costume do's," Peter said, gathering his brows just the way his father had.
"You could scarcely remember everything your father and I did, Peter," Amy said placidly. Peter tended to act the expert. "There's more Horlicks." She reached for Peter's glass, smiling to clear the anxiety from her daughter's face. "Molly's making more and we have to keep up with her production. Peter, time for you to check her while we girls do the supper dishes. Then all of you, off to bed…"
She made the school lunches and checked the doors before she could no longer defer the mystery of the fancy clothes. Resolutely she climbed the stairs, looking down into the square hall, as she came to the first landing. The oldest part of the house, the estate agent had said, probably was an old Norman keep, though the stonework was in astonishingly good condition for a structure so old. Doubtless that was why the fifteenth-century architects had incorporated the keep when the cottage was built. Certainly, thought Amy, the house was a continuous production: all periods, rather than one, now combined into a hodgepodgery that had appealed to Peter's sense of the ridiculous.
The heterogeneity had also fascinated the engineer who had examined the house for Peter and Amy prior to the contract signing. On the way down to Dorset, the man had been frankly suspicious at the asking price and warned Peter and Amy to be forearmed for disappointment in its state of repair. Surprisingly, the engineer had discovered very few problems, most of which could be put right with a judicious slap of mortar, plaster, or paint, and the odd dab of putty or sealer. The cellar was dry, the thick sound walls oozed no damp, the floors were remarkably level, the chimneys, of which there were nine in all, drew, the drains were recent and in good order, the slate roof was undamaged by the storms of the previous winter. And not a sign of woodworm or dry rot. The engineer reluctantly concluded that the Tower Cottage had been so reasonably priced because, as advertised, it was genuinely to be sold quickly to settle the Alderdyce estate.
Still, there was a palpable aura in the square hall, which Peter had chalked up to antiquity. And something almost expectant in the atmosphere in the box room immediately above the hall, those two rooms comprising what was left of the old Norman keep. Amy was not a fanciful person, certainly not superstitious, or she would never had moved into Tower Cottage at all after Peter's death. Yet she avoided the box room, sending the children either to retrieve objects stored there or consign others to its capacious shelving or the huge, heavy wooden chest that dominated the front wall under the two slit windows. "Flemish work," the engineer had called the chest, with the modem addition of a thin veneer of cedarwood on the inside to make its purpose clear. He had wondered if the chest had been built in situ, for he could not see how it would otherwise have got through the doorway. Peter had sat on the chest that day, Amy recalled: he'd thumped the wood, laughing at the hollow echo of the empty chest, remarking that it would be a good place to hide the body… several bodies by the size of it. Amy had felt the frisson then, running up her spine to seize her head and jerk it on the neck with an involuntary force that had astonished her. The engineer noticed and solicitously remarked that un-lived-in houses always chilled him.