When the taxi reached the bay in front of the entrance doors, it was approached by what appeared at Burke’s distance to be a huge turtle, waddling upright upon its back flippers. Burke hastened nearer but kept in the lee of a car. He saw that the figure was in fact a doorman in a Henry VIII costume, puffed to almost spherical proportions.
The doorman pulled open the taxi door and recited with neither enthusiasm nor punctuation:
“My lord and lady pray welcome to ye feast God save King Harry.”
For a moment, Tudor gazed admiringly at the spectacle of Gardener Todd, transfigured by doublet and stuffing. “You the retainer or something?” he inquired gruffly.
“Yer wot?” glowered Todd. He was sensible of the vulnerability imposed by the obligation to “ponce around in this get-up”, as he put it.
Tudor leaned close, a pound note between two fingers. “Get this door shut quick and waste the next guy’s time a bit, OK?” He swung across to speak to the driver. As the door slammed, the taxi moved forward. It accelerated noisily towards a bend in the driveway and disappeared from view.
Constable Burke stood in a coma of puzzlement for a moment, then strode to the car that had just reached the head of the queue and was receiving the attention of a doorman suddenly and unaccountably enfeebled and hard of hearing.
Burke sternly informed the driver that he was a police officer requiring his immediate cooperation. The driver—a Mr Padstowe, who had brought his wife and sister-in-law all the way from Derby to be banqueted—was too bewildered to do anything but let his passengers be bundled out and himself enjoined to “follow that taxi that was here a minute ago.”
“I’m not a fast driver, you know,” complained Mr Padstowe, defensively, when they drew up at the junction with the main road.
“It’s not a fast taxi,” said Burke. He peered in both directions along Hunting’s Lane. “We’ll try the way back towards town first.”
Mr Tudor, who was rather better at standing behind shrubs than was Constable Burke, watched Mr Padstowe’s car disappear into the twilight. He then strolled slowly back to the Floradora, savouring the novel but pleasant mixture of the scents of mould and evening flowers and wood smoke that reminded him he was a very long way from Manhattan.
Two more coaches drew up. One disgorged some thirty members of the Chalmsbury Darby and Joan Club. From the other descended a miscellany of ticket holders from the Cambridge area. They stood in separate and irresolute groups until there appeared Gardener Joxy, disguised as an executioner. He waved his plastic axe in the direction of the club entrance and mutteringly adjured them to “getfuknshiftedinfurfukngodsake”.
This message, though not receiving their literal understanding, was taken in good part, and Joxy’s droll attire earned many a laugh and nudge from the new arrivals.
“Are you Henry the Eighth’s lady-killer, then?” inquired one jocular old soul. Her companions squealed with delight.
“Gitfuknstuffed,” the headsman responded tightly through his mask.
The ladies grinned happily and moved on.
Mr Tudor mingled with them. For a man of solemn nature, he looked moderately pleased with life, but one felt that no degree of contentment would ever quite overcome his right hand’s curious propensity for loitering in the neighbourhood of his left armpit, nor lull the practised watchfulness of his eye.
The proprietor of the Floradora, no lover of nostalgic junketting, was circulating from group to group in the more constrained atmosphere of the gaming-room. He was accompanied by his secretary. Mrs Hatch very seldom visited the club, unless her advice were sought on a change of decor; she insisted on calling it her husband’s “place of business” and gave the impression that she believed his presence there afforded him no more pleasure than if it had been an insurance office or a bank.
The two men stood at a slight distance from the roulette table. Hatch appeared contented, complaisant almost. Amis glanced about him restlessly. He looked apprehensive.
“To hell with Purbright,” said Hatch, quietly. “What does he expect me to do—lock myself in the bloody lavatory?”
“He must have had some reason for asking you to stay at home this evening.”
“Reason, my arse. The more I think about this nonsense the more I’m sure that that bugger Crispin’s behind it. And I’m not biting.”
Hatch nodded at a group of town councillors and their wives who were sitting close behind the wheel operator, primly self-conscious. The comparative novelty of gambling in Flaxborough was an attraction, certainly, but by no means a compulsion. Councillor Hillberry, for instance, looked about as dissipated as a grocer weighing bacon, while Mrs Nixon, wife of the vice-chairman, clutched her chips like dominoes and kept asking: “Do I put one down now?” in a happy little bleat to which she neither received nor seemed to expect response.
The only really professional touch about the proceedings was the smirk of satanic superiority on the face of the operator. He was a young man employed during the day by the local gas board as a meter reader.
Only two Flowers were in the gaming-room, all the other hostesses having been mobilised for Nelly duty. These two were dealing to card games, but it was too early to attract full tables.
As Hatch and Amis loitered for a moment to smile upon dealer Marigold and her few communicants and wish them good evening, there entered through the doorway at the far side of the room a man whose calculated unobtrusiveness of manner set him apart at once from the other customers, all hugely aware of their exposure to iniquity.
It was Mr Tudor. In less than ten seconds, and with no betrayal of the slightest interest, his darkly hooded eye had registered every face in the room. Then he turned, and was gone.
By half past eight, practically every bench in the Wassail Hall was filled. Nellies had begun to push their serving wagons along the gangways. They picked up the tankards of mulled sack and reached across the guests from behind, simultaneously contriving, as a part of the entertainment which would long linger in the memory of those favoured, to poultice the right ear of every gentleman with a generous helping of bare bosom.
Peter observed this tactic. He made a jotting.
Permissiveness pivotal to hostess situation but check deniability.
Upon a raised dais in the centre of one side of the hall sat some thirty guests who had paid extra to share what the brochures called “The Baronial Board”.
Their privileges included the wearing of articles of medieval dress from the club wardrobe; a double quaffing quota that included a “draught of My Lord’s Canary” permission to belch and to match wits with the Jester; and the exclusive personal service at their table of Maid Marion. Behind this picturesque pseudonym bloomed buxom Mrs Roy Hubbard, dubbed by her husband’s sole literate acquaintance “the Last Lay of the Minstrel”.
Maid Marion sidled along the table, handing out daggers. She had already been round with wine. Some of the women looked apprehensively at the daggers; others looked even more apprehensively at Maid Marion, whose décolleté was almost navel-deep.