“Oh, I know he’s on about all that,” Cressida said, jiggling her slipper, “but, let’s face it, gracious living is what really turns him on. Me, too. You know?”
Mrs. Forrester stared at her for several seconds and then, with an emphatic movement of her torso, directed herself at Troy. “How do you manage?” she asked.
“As best we can. My husband’s a policeman and his hours are enough to turn any self-respecting domestic into a psychotic wreck.”
“A policeman?” Cressida exclaimed and added, “Oh, yes, I forgot. Hilly told me. But he’s madly high-powered and famous, isn’t he?”
As there seemed to be no answer to this, Troy did not attempt to make one.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something about the tree?” she asked Mrs. Forrester.
“Hilary likes to supervise. You should know that by now.”
“Not exactly a jet-set scene, is it?” Cressida said. “You know. Gaol-boss. Gaol-doctor. Warders. Chaplain. To say nothing of the gaol-kids. Oh, I forgot. A groovy shower of neighbours, all very county and not one under the age of seventy. Hilarious. Let the bells chime.”
“I am seventy years of age and my husband is seventy-three.”
“There I go,” Cressida said. “You know? The bottom.” She burst out laughing and suddenly knelt at Mrs. Forrester’s feet. She swung back the glossy burden of her hair and put her hands together. “I’m not as lethally awful as I make out,” she said. “You’ve both been fantastic to me. Always. I’m grateful. Hilly will have to beat me like a gong. You know? Bang-bang. Then I’ll behave beautifully. Sweetie-pie, Aunt B, forgive me.”
Troy thought, “Aunt Bed would have to be a Medusa to freeze her,” and sure enough a smile twitched at the corners of Mrs. Forrester’s mouth. “I suppose you’re no worse than the rest of your generation,” she conceded. “You’re clean and neat: I’ll say that for you.”
“As clean as a whistle and as neat as a new pin, aren’t I? Do you think I’ll adorn Hilly’s house, Aunt B?”
“Oh, you’ll look nice,” said Mrs. Forrester. “You may depend upon that. See you behave yourself.”
“Behave myself,” Cressida repeated. There was a pause. The fire crackled. A draught from somewhere up near the ceiling caused the kissing bough to turn a little on its cord. In the dining-room, made distant by heavy walls and doors, Hilary’s laugh sounded. With a change of manner so marked as to be startling Cressida said, “Would you call me a sinful lady, Aunt Bedelia?”
“What on earth are you talking about, child? What’s the matter with you?”
“Quite a lot, it appears. Look.”
She opened her golden bag and took out a folded piece of paper. “I found it under my door when I went up to dress. I was saving it for Hilary,” she said, “but you two may as well see it. Go on, please. Open it up. Read it. Both of you.”
Mrs. Forrester stared at her for a moment, frowned, and unfolded the paper. She held it away from her so that Troy could see what was printed on it in enormous capitals.
SINFUL LADY BEWARE
an unchaste woman is an abomination.
he shall not suffer thee to dwell in his house.
“What balderdash is this! Where did you get it?”
“I told you. Under my door.”
Mrs. Forrester made an abrupt movement as if to crush the paper, but Cressida’s hand was laid over hers. “No, don’t,” Cressida said, “I’m going to show it to Hilary. And I must say I hope it’ll change his mind about his ghastly Nigel.”
When Hilary was shown the paper, which was as soon as the men came into the drawing-room, he turned very quiet. For what seemed a long time he stood with it in his hands, frowning at it and saying nothing. Mr. Smith walked over to him, glanced at the paper, and gave out a soft, protracted whistle. Colonel Forrester looked inquiringly from Hilary to his wife, who shook her head at him. He then turned away to admire the tree and the kissing bough.
“Well, boy,” said Mrs. Forrester. “What do you make of that?”
“I don’t know. Not, I think, what I am expected to make of it, Aunt Bed.”
“Whatever anybody makes of it,” Cressida pointed out, “it’s not the nicest kind of thing to find in one’s bedroom.”
Hilary broke into a strange apologia: tender, oblique, guarded. It was a horrid, silly thing to have happened, he told Cressida, and she mustn’t let it trouble her. It wasn’t worth a second thought. “Look,” he said, “up the chimney with it, vulgar little beast,” and threw it on the fire. It blackened, its preposterous legend turned white and started out in momentary prominence, it was reduced to a wraith of itself and flew out of sight. “Gone! Gone! Gone!” chanted Hilary rather wildly and spread his arms.
“I don’t think you ought to have done that,” Cressida said, “I think we ought to have kept it.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Smith chimed in. “For dabs,” he added.
This familiar departmental word startled Troy. Mr. Smith grinned at her. “That’s correct,” he said. “Innit? What your good man calls routine, that is. Dabs. You oughter kep’ it, ’Illy.”
“I think, Uncle Bert, I must be allowed to manage this ridiculous little incident in my own way.”
“Hullo-ullo-ullo!”
“I’m quite sure, Cressida darling, it’s merely an idiot-joke on somebody’s part. How I detest practical jokes!” Hilary hurried on with an unconvincing return to his usual manner. He turned to Troy, “Don’t you?”
“When they’re as unfunny as this. If this is one.”
“Which I don’t for a moment believe,” Cressida said. “Joke! It’s a deliberate insult. Or worse.” She appealed to Mrs. Forrester. “Isn’t it?” she demanded.
“I haven’t the remotest idea what it may be. What do you say to all this, Fred, I said what —”
She broke off. Her husband had gone to the far end of the room and was pacing out the distance from the french windows to the tree.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen — fifteen feet exactly,” he was saying. “I shall have to walk fifteen feet. Who’s going to shut the french window after me? These things need to be worked out.”
“Honestly, Hilly darling, I do not think it can be all shrugged off, you know, like a fun thing. When you yourself have said Nigel always refers to his victim as a sinful lady. It seems to me to be perfectly obvious he’s set his sights at me and I find it terrifying. You know, terrifying.”
“But,” Hilary said, “it isn’t. I promise you, my lovely child, it’s not at all terrifying. The circumstances are entirely different —”
“I should hope so considering she was a tart.”
“— and of course I shall get to the bottom of it. It’s too preposterous. I shall put it before —”
“You can’t put it before anybody. You’ve burnt it.”
“Nigel is completely recovered.”
“ ’Ere,” Mr. Smith said. “What say one of that lot’s got it in for ’im? What say it’s been done to discredit ’im? Planted? Spiteful, like?”
“But they get on very well together.”
“Not with the Colonel’s chap. Not with Moult they don’t. No love lost there, I’ll take a fiver on it. I seen the way they look at ’im. And ’im at them.”
“Nonsense, Smith,” said Mrs. Forrester. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Moult’s been with us for twenty years.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Oh Lord!” Cressida said loudly and dropped into an armchair.
“— and who’s going to read out the names?” the Colonel speculated. “I can’t wear my specs. They’d look silly.”