The owner of the Neptune Hotel—steak bar and all—suddenly hunched his shoulders and nearly butted Miss Cadbury, who drew back in alarm. Some of his drink spilled on her flank, but then ran in harmless droplets down the resilient wool of her costume. Mr Dampier-Small, instinctively chivalrous, offered her his handkerchief while contriving himself to move to a safer position. Everyone else stared and waited for Mr Crispin, whom they confidently assumed to be helpless in a fit of choler, to launch himself upon his hostess.
Several seconds went by before they realised the truth. Mr Crispin’s paroxysm had been occasioned simply by his having laughed in the middle of an inhalation of cigar smoke. Now he fetched a big growling sigh and flapped his hand.
“Christ, woman! You mustn’t say things like that!”
He nipped the glowing end of his cigar between a finger and thumb hardened to horn by early years of thrift. He chuckled as he stuffed the butt into a waistcoat pocket.
“Aye, that poor bloody horse”—he was addressing the company at large, with a special look at Mrs Hatch now and again, as if to invite her expert corroboration—“that poor bloody horse—what is it you call it again, Sophie? Mister MacWhatsitsname? Anyway, it used to belong to Joe O’Conlon, the bookie. That’s right, isn’t it Sophie? Yes, but here, wait a minute, do you know why Joe got rid of it? I’ll tell you. The poor bloody brute was costing him thirty bob a week in aspirin. That’s why. Crippled with arthritis, poor beast. Used to shovel aspirin down its throat through a funnel. Racehorse? Couldn’t race itself to the knacker’s yard.”
There was a pause. Mrs Hatch patted her tight, blue-grey perm, then stroked the topmost of the three strands of pearls that rode her bosom. Her face, carefully averted from the slanderer of Mister Machonochie, was set in an expression of patient contempt.
“If Mr Crispin has quite finished,” she murmured, “perhaps you’d care for some more refreshment.” She looked with some puzzlement at the windows. “I’m sorry our little piece de resistance has decided to be awkward, though.”
Mrs Scorpe echoed the phrase “piece de resistance” with malicious emphasis upon Mrs Hatch’s anglicised pronunciation.
Having shaken the green bottle and found that it was more nearly empty than she had expected, Mrs Hatch stood on tip-toes and looked across heads. “Has anyone seen Mr Amis?” She caught the blank look on the face of the Deputy Town Clerk. “My husband’s private secretary,” she explained. Mr Dampier-Small shook his head.
“Secretary. God help us!” Mrs Scorpe’s capacity for sardonic repetition seemed inexhaustible. Hard-mouthed, Mrs Hatch turned upon her.
“Did you say something, Vera?”
“Who, me?” Mrs Scorpe offered a smile like a cut throat. Mrs Hatch looked away hastily.
She went out of the room and to the head of the staircase. She called down.
“Are you there, Edmund?”
A door opened somewhere. She waited until there appeared at the turn of the stairs a slim, fastidious-looking man of about thirty, wearing a formal grey suit. He peered upward. His bearing seemed calculated, like the pose of a photographic model. Two fingers of his left hand rested delicately upon the stair rail. “Did you want me, Mrs Hatch?”
“It looks as if we’ve exhausted our White Ladies. Would you mind seeing if there’s another bottle? It will either be in Mr Hatch’s study or else in the kitchen. Near the bread bin.”
“Very well, Mrs Hatch.”
“Oh, and Edmund...”
“Yes, Mrs Hatch?”
She leaned low over the banisters and whispered hoarsely: “I’m not sure, but I think that you-know-what has gone wrong.”
“No!” Pain and regret were pictured instantly in Amis’s face. “Oh, I am sorry.”
He walked out of sight down the hall. She heard cans and bottles being moved about in the kitchen. He returned almost at once and came far enough up the stairs to hand her a second quart of cocktail mixture.
“I do think it’s a shame.” He indicated the bedroom door with a nod. “Especially when you’d asked friends round.”
Mrs Hatch shrugged as she took the bottle. “Oh, I haven’t given up yet. It’s a brighter evening than yesterday. That’s probably the reason.”
“It is brighter. Oh, yes, decidedly.” Amis looked at his wristwatch. “Which explains why I’m still here. I hadn’t noticed the time.”
With a beam of gratitude for his attempt to reassure her, Mrs Hatch turned on the stair and went back to her guests.
By dramatic coincidence, the hush that succeeded her re-entry was pierced by a metallic ping.
“Ah!” cried Mrs Hatch. She raised her hand.
The thin whine of an electric motor.
“That’s it!” whispered Mrs Hatch. Her face registered something akin to the ecstasy of a rewarded bird-watcher. One finger crooked to direct the company’s gaze.
In slow, simultaneous, steady progression across the biggest bedroom window in Partney Avenue moved eight heavy satin brocade curtains, each extending across its appointed area of glass until the last split of pale daylight was obliterated. For a moment or two, everyone stared helplessly into absolute darkness. Then the motor’s little song died and there was a second ping. Opalescent panels set in the wall behind the bed came to life in a raspberry glow. There was a sudden murmur of admiration.
“It is rather pretty, isn’t it?” said Mrs Hatch. She, too, was glowing.
Chapter Three
“You were right, Love. That creep Hubert was there. Bloody little ponce.”
Councillor Crispin bawled the information back under his left arm. Jacketless and up-sleeved, he was bending low over the pink porcelain sink unit in the kitchen and sluicing water from cupped hands over his red, knobbly face.
In the adjoining dining-room, Mr Crispin’s housekeeper smiled as she sorted out fish knives and forks from a big case of presentation cutlery. “Said so, didn’t I?” She breathed upon one of the knives and polished it on her hip.
“Council officials,” said Mr Crispin through the towel, “ought to know better than go touting around at private parties. They’re supposed to be above that sort of bloody thing.”
Mrs Millicent Spain nodded primly as she measured with her eye the spacing of the knife and fork upon one of the table mats before her. The mats were rectangles of cork-based plastic that formed a set of illustrations of scenes from Dickens. The one she had put in Mr Crispin’s place showed the Death of Little Nell. His favourite, as she knew, was the Cratchitts’ Christmas Dinner, but Mrs Spain was convinced that it was over-fondness for his own wares that had carried off her butcher husband two years before and she had no intention of being deprived of bed and board a second time if she could forestall that eventuality by healthy suggestion.