“It meant promotion for him, you know. Banks are very security-minded. Well, they have to be. Don’t they, Ted?”
Mr Maddox spoke.
“My wife and I have been admiring your, ah, your very tasteful...” He gestured vaguely with his glass.
Mrs Hatch’s air of anxiety was dispelled momentarily by a smile of gratification. She watched Mrs Maddox gaze in turn at the mother-of-pearl vinyl wall covering, the café-au-lait fitted carpet, the dressing-table in the semblance of a white grand piano (the keys worked little drawers containing cosmetics and the “score” on the music stand was a mirror etched with notes and clef signs), the midnight blue buttoned-padding ceiling, and, dominating even these wonders, the vast water bed—a round, lung-pink, be-frilled slab that wobbled with the passage of traffic like some incredibly obese ballerina, floor-bound in the final subsidence of the Dying Swan.
“We like things to be nice,” said Mrs Hatch.
She froze, holding up one finger, “Ah...”
The company watched, listened. None moved.
“I thought I heard it starting,” said Mrs Hatch after several uneventful seconds. She was staring at the window. Her face was now decidedly strained.
“False alarm?” suggested Mr Beach, as cheerily as he thought was decent. Mrs Beach shushed him.
From somewhere in the depths of the house there sounded a peal of bells. It was repeated so quickly that some of the strikes clashed cacophonously. Mrs Hatch stepped quickly across to the window, frowning. “Oh, I do wish they wouldn’t press it like that!”
She looked out. A car was double-parked against the others outside the house. It was an exceptionally large car.
Mrs Hatch hastened from window to door. On the way, she gave Mr Dampier-Small a tight smile of satisfaction and murmured to him: “It’s Councillor Crispin; he’s here now.”
Somebody below evidently had opened the front door. Mrs Hatch called down from the landing: “Up here, Harry. Come on, before you miss it.”
“Anybody would think,” remarked Mrs Scorpe in a universally audible aside to Miss Cadbury, “that she’d got the Queen coming for cocoa.”
Miss Cadbury’s expression became even sterner. Flippancy in regard to the Royal Family was reprehensible enough in itself; employing it to belittle a lady whose husband made regular and sizeable contributions to the Kindly Kennel Klan was quite unforgivable.
Councillor Henry Norman Crispin, proprietor of Happyland, Brocklestone-on-Sea, chief shareholder in a north of England juke box company, and substantial owner of two medium-sized hotels on the coast, knew how to make an entrance.
After coming briskly through the doorway, he made a sudden halt, as if unprepared to find so many people in the room, and then stared intently and without haste at each in turn while a smile of mock disapprobation spread slowly over his face. This performance succeeded in conveying the impression of his having surprised them all in the midst of some kind of lewd revel.
Even Mrs Hatch was disconcerted for a moment. “We’ve been waiting for it to get dark,” she explained.
Mr Crispin wordlessly signified that this he could well believe. Mrs Hatch blushed. “It ought to work at any second now.”
Crispin nodded familiarly at the Deputy Town Clerk and dispensed sly half-winks to Beach, Maddox and Mrs Scorpe. Mrs Scorpe pretended not to like being winked at, but next time she raised her eyes to the ceiling she was looking pleased.
To Miss Cadbury he offered a formal “Good evening“. She responded with dignity but no warmth. Councillor Crispin she considered, in her own phrase, “a lustful man“. Had he been handsome also, this would not have mattered so much. Miss Cadbury thought that good looks gave entitlement to a certain boldness of manner; just as warmbloodedness was understandable in the nobly born. Mr Crispin, alas, was ugly and the son of a Chalmsbury cattle drover. That he had made lots of money did not alter those basic facts so far as she was concerned.
“And what is it,” inquired Mr Crispin of Mrs Hatch, “that ought to work at any second now?” He picked up one of the heavy cut crystal claret glasses in which the cocktails were being offered and squinted at it indulgently, as if knowing exactly how little it had cost. “Another of Arnie’s little do-it-yourself gadgets?” He chuckled with the aid of some spare phlegm and glanced quickly round the company. “He’s a great boy for public ceremonies, I’ll say that for him.”
“Just a few friends that might be interested,” said Mrs Hatch coldly. “And the installation”—she lingered over the word—“was carried out by Scuffhams, as a matter of fact.” An arch, absent-minded smile. “It’s a long, long time since Arnold had a tool in his hand. My word, yes...”
She realised too late what a hostage she had offered Councillor Crispin’s incorrigible vulgarity. He did not say anything. But he had no need to. The grin of comic condolence that turned his protuberant cheeks and chin, bulbous nose and plump jowls into the semblance of a squeezed-up bag of tennis balls was eloquent enough. “Oh, my God!” breathed the delighted Mrs Scorpe to herself.
Mr Beach felt the sharp prompting of his wife’s shoe. He shot back his cuff and stared with exaggerated concern at his watch. “By jove!” he exclaimed, hoping thereby to discharge responsibility.
His wife leaned towards Mrs Hatch. “Mr Beach understands electronic installations. Installations in banks tend to be tricky, you know. Perhaps you’d like him to cast an eye?”
Mrs Scorpe noted the immediate flicker of anxiety in the said eye. She hoped that the offer would be accepted. But Mrs Hatch shook her head.
“I’m afraid Scuffhams leave everything sealed up,” she said. “They’ll only allow their own experts to have anything to do with the control system. Well, of course, when equipment costs so much to install . . .”
“Best not to meddle with something one doesn’t understand,” Mr Maddox said. Having grown bored with waiting, he was polishing his spectacles upon the clean handkerchief he had taken from his breast pocket. “What they say about a shoemaker sticking to his last is still true today.”
“Sticking to what?” asked Councillor Crispin.
“His last.”
“His last what?”
Mr Maddox looked flustered. Reddening, he shrugged and gave his glasses another rub.
“Where’s Arnie?” Crispin asked Mrs Hatch.
“He’s in Newmarket.” The reply was immediate and almost affable. “Mister Machonochie is running on Friday. In the Pountney Stakes. Pountney—is that right?” She looked about her. “I can never remember these race names.”
“It should be easy enough to remember the ones that nag of Arnie’s has won.” Crispin was grinning into the unresponsive face of Miss Cadbury and trying to offer her a cigar.
Mrs Hatch tilted her head a little and smiled forbearingly into the distance. “Mr Crispin,” she said quietly and to no one in particular, “knows all there is to know about horses. So long as they’re either going round in a fairground or on plates in the Neptune steak bar.”