As she dressed, Troy could hear the Forresters shouting to each other next door and concluded that the Colonel was back on his usual form. When she opened her wardrobe she heard the now familiar jangle of coat hangers on the other side.
“Good-morning!” Troy shouted. She tapped on the common wall. “Happy Christmas!” she cried.
A man’s voice said, “Thank you, madam. I’ll tell the Colonel and Mrs. Forrester.”
Moult.
She heard him go away. There was a distant conjunction of voices and then he returned, discreetly tapping on the wall.
“The Colonel and Mrs. Forrester’s compliments, madam, and they would be very happy if you would look in.”
“In five minutes,” Troy shouted. “Thank you.”
When she made her call she found Colonel and Mrs. Forrester in bed and bolt upright under a green-lined umbrella of the sort associated with Victorian missionaries and Empire builders. The wintry sun lay across their counterpane. Each wore a scarlet dressing gown the skirts of which were deployed round the wearer like some monstrous calyx. They resembled gods of a sort.
In unison they wished Troy a Happy Christmas and invited her to sit down.
“Being an artist,” Mrs. Forrester said, “you will not find it out-of-the-way to be informally received.”
At the far end of the room a door into their bathroom stood open and beyond that a second door into a dressing-room where Moult could be seen brushing a suit.
“I had heard,” said Troy, “about the umbrella.”
“We don’t care for the sun in our eyes. I wonder,” said Mrs. Forrester, “if I might ask you to shut the bathroom door. Thank you very much. Moult has certain prejudices which we prefer not to arouse. Fred, put in your aid. I said put in your aid.”
Colonel Forrester, who had smiled and nodded a great deal without seeming to hear anything much, found his hearing aid on his bedside table and fitted it into his ear.
“It’s a wonderful invention,” he said. “I’m a little worried about wearing it tonight, though. But, after all, the wig’s awfully long. A Druid with a visible hearing aid would be too absurd, don’t you think?”
“First of all,” Mrs. Forrester began, “were there any developments after we went to bed?”
“We’re dying to know,” said the Colonel.
Troy told them about Mr. Smith and. the soap. Mrs. Forrester rubbed her nose vexedly. “That’s very tiresome,” she said. “It upsets my theory. Fred, it upsets my theory.”
“Sickening for you, B.”
“And yet, does it? I’m not so sure. It might be a ruse, you know, I said…”
“I’m wearing my aid, B.”
“What,” Troy asked, “is your theory?”
“I was persuaded that Smith wrote the letters.”
“But surely…”
“He’s a good creature in many ways but his sense of humour is coarse and he dislikes Cressida Tottenham.”
“B, my dear, I’m sure you’re mistaken.”
“No you’re not. You’re afraid I’m right. He doesn’t think she’s good enough for Hilary. Nor do I.”
“Be that as it may, B —”
“Be that as it is, you mean. Don’t confuse me, Fred.”
“— Bert Smith would certainly not write that disgraceful message to me. About you.”
“I don’t agree. He’d think it funny.”
The Colonel looked miserable. “But it’s not,” he said.
“Hilary thought it funny,” Mrs. Forrester said indignantly and turned to Troy. “Did you? I suppose Hilary told you what it said.”
“In general terms.”
“Well? Funny?”
Troy said, “At the risk of making myself equally objectionable I’m afraid I’ve got to confess that —”
“Very well. You need go no further.” Mrs. Forrester looked at her husband and remarked, astoundingly. “Impertinent, yes. Unfounded, of course. Preposterous, not so farfetched as you may suppose.”
A reminiscent gleam, Troy could have sworn, came into Mrs. Forrester’s eye.
“I don’t believe Bert would make himself sick,” the Colonel urged.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Mrs. Forrester said darkly. “However,” she continued with a wave of her hand, “that is unimportant. What I wished to talk to you about, Mrs. Alleyn, is the line I hope we shall all take in this matter. Fred and I have decided to ignore it. To dismiss it —” she swept her arm across the Colonel, who blinked and drew back “— entirely. As if it had never been. We refuse to give the perpetrator of these insults, the satisfaction of paying them the slightest attention. We hope you will join us in this stand.”
“Because,” her husband added, “it would only spoil everything— the tree and so on. We’re having a rehearsal after church and one must give one’s full attention.”
“And you’re quite recovered, Colonel?”
“Yes, yes, quite, thank you. It’s my old ticker, you know. A leaky valve or some nonsense of that sort, the quacks tell me. Nothing to fuss about.”
“Well,” Troy said, getting up, “I’ll agree — mum’s the word.”
“Good. That settles that. I don’t know how this gel of yours is going to behave herself, Fred.”
“She’s not mine, B.”
“She was your responsibility.”
“Not now, though.” The Colonel turned towards Troy but did not look at her. His face was pink. He spoke rapidly as if he had memorized his observations and wished to get rid of them. “Cressida,” he explained, “is the daughter of a young fellow in my regiment. Germany. 1950. We were on an exercise and my jeep overturned.” Here the Colonel’s eyes filled with tears. “And do you know this dear fellow got me out? I was pinned face down in the mud and he got me out and then the most dreadful things happened. Collapse. Petrol. And I promised him I’d keep an eye on the child.”
“Luckily,” said Mrs. Forrester, “she was well provided for. School in Switzerland and all that. I say nothing of the result.”
“Her mother died, poor thing. In childbirth.”
“And now,” said Mrs. Forrester, suddenly shutting up their umbrella with a definite snap, “now she’s in some sort of actressy business.”
“She’s an awfully pretty girl, don’t you think?”
“Lovely,” said Troy warmly and went down to breakfast.
Hilary was busy during the morning, but Troy did a certain amount of work on the portrait before making herself ready for church.
When she looked through the library windows that gave on the great courtyard, she got quite a shock. Nigel had completed his effigy. The packing case was mantled in frozen snow and on top of it, sharply carved and really quite impressive in his glittering iciness, lay Hilary’s Bill-Tasman ancestor, his hands crossed, rather like flatfish, on his breast.
At half-past ten, the monk’s bell rang fast and exuberantly in its tower as if its operator was a bit above himself. Troy made her way downstairs and across the hall and, following instructions, turned right into the corridor which served the library, the breakfast-room, the boudoir, Hilary’s study and, as it now transpired, the chapel.
It was a superb chapel. It was full, but by no means too full, of treasures. Its furniture, including monstrance and candlesticks, quattrocento confessional — the lot — was in impeccable taste and, no doubt, awfully valuable.
Troy experienced a frightful desire to hang crinkly paper garlands on some insipid plaster saint.
Blore, Mervyn, Nigel, Vincent, Kittiwee and the Boy were already seated. They were supplemented by a cluster of odd bodies whom she supposed to be outside workers at Halberds and their wives and children. Hilary and Cressida were in the front pew. The rest of the houseparty soon assembled and the service went through with High Church decorum. The prison chaplain gave a short, civilized sermon. Colonel Forrester, to Troy’s surprise and pleasure, played the lovely little organ for the seasonable hymns. Hilary read the gospel, and Mr. Smith, with surprising aplomb and the full complement of aitches, the epistle.