He asked this so anxiously, like a character in Alice, that she hadn’t the heart to give anything less than an enthusiastic assent and almost expected him to say cosily that they must dress up together one of these days.
“Uncle Flea’s a brilliant performer,” Hilary said, “and his beard is the pièce de résistance. He has it made by Wig Creations. It wouldn’t disgrace King Lear. And then the wig itself! So different from the usual repellent falsity. You shall see.”
“We’ve made some changes,” said Colonel Forrester excitedly. “They’ve re-dressed it. The feller said he thought it was a bit on the long side and might make me look as if I’d opted out. One can’t be too careful.”
Hilary brought the drinks. Two of them were large and steaming and had slices of lemon in them.
“Your rum toddies, Aunt Bed,” he said. “Tell me if there’s not enough sugar.”
Mrs. Forrester wrapped her handkerchief round her glass and sat down with it. “It seems all right,” she said. “Did you put nutmeg in your uncle’s?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You will think,” said the Colonel to Troy, “that rum toddies before dinner are funny things to drink, but we make a point of putting them forward after a journey. Usually they are nightcaps.”
“They smell delicious.”
“Would you like one?” Hilary asked her. “Instead of a White Lady.”
“I think I’ll stick to the White Lady.”
“So shall I. Well, my dears,” Hilary said generally. “We are a small houseparty this year. Only Cressida and Uncle Bert to come. They both arrive tomorrow.”
“Are you still engaged to Cressida?” asked his aunt.
“Yes. The arrangement stands. I am in high hopes, Aunt Bed, that you will take more of a fancy to Cressida on second sight.”
“It’s not second sight. It’s fiftieth sight. Or more.”
“But you know what I mean. Second sight since we became engaged.”
“What’s the odds?” she replied ambiguously.
“Well, Aunt Bed, I would have thought —” Hilary broka off and rubbed his nose. “Well, anyway, Aunt Bed, considering I met her in your house.”
“More’s the pity. I warned your uncle. I said I warned you, Fred.”
“What about, B?”
“Your gel! The Tottenham gel. Cressida.”
“She’s not mine, B. You put things so oddly, my dear.”
“Well, anyway,” Hilary said. “I hope you change your mind, Auntie.”
“One can but hope,” she rejoined and turned to Troy. “Have you met Miss Tottenham?” she asked.
“No.”
“Hilary thinks she will go with the house. We’re still talking about Cressida,” Mrs. Forrester bawled at her husband.
“I know you are. I heard.”
After this they sipped their drinks, Mrs. Forrester making rather a noise with hers and blowing on it to cool it down.
“The arrangements for Christmas Day,” Hilary began after a pause, “are, I think, an improvement on last year. I’ve thought of a new entrance for you, Uncle Flea.”
“Have you, though? Have you? Have you?”
“From outside. Through the french windows behind the tree.”
“Outside!” Mrs. Forrester barked. “Do I understand you, Hilary? Do you plan to put your uncle out on the terrace on a midwinter night — in a snowstorm, I said a snowstorm?”
“It’ll only be for a moment, Aunt Bed.”
“You have not forgotten, I suppose, that your uncle suffers from a circulatory complaint.”
“I’ll be all right, B.”
“I don’t like it, I said —”
“But I assure you! And the undergarment is quilted.”
“Pshaw! I said—”
“No, but do listen!”
“Don’t fuss, B. My boots are fur-lined. Go on, old boy. You were saying —?”
“I’ve got a lovely tape recording of sleigh bells and snorting reindeer. Don’t interrupt, anybody. I’ve done my research and I’m convinced that there’s an overlap here, between the Teutonic and the druidical and if there’s not,” Hilary said rapidly, “there ought to be. So. We’ll hear you shout ‘Whoa,’ Uncle Flea, outside, to the reindeer, and then you’ll come in.”
“I don’t shout very loud nowadays, old boy,” he said worriedly. “Not the Pirbright note any more, I’m afraid.”
“I thought of that. I’ve had the ‘whoa’ added to the bells and snorts. Blore did it. He has a stentorian voice.”
“Good. Good.”
“There will be thirty-one children and about a dozen parents. And the usual assortment of county and farmers. Outside hands and, of course, the staff.”
“Warders?” asked Mrs. Forrester. “From That Place?”
“Yes. From the married quarters. Two. Wives and families.”
“Marchbanks?”
“If he can get away. They have their own commitments. The chaplain cooks up something pretty joyless. Christmas,” said Hilary acidly, “under maximum security. I imagine one can hardly hear the carols for the alarm bells.”
“I suppose,” said his aunt after a good suck at her toddy, “you all know what you’re about. I’m sure I don’t. I smell danger.”
“That’s a dark saying, Auntie,” remarked Hilary.
Blore came in and announced dinner. It was true that he had a very loud voice.
Two — Christmas Eve
Before they went to bed they listened to the regional weather report. It said that snow was expected to fall through the night and into Christmas Eve but that it was unlikely to continue until Christmas Day itself. A warm front was approaching over the Atlantic Ocean.
“I always think,” Hilary remarked, “of a warm front as belonging to a décolleté Regency lady thrusting her opulent prow, as it were, into some consequential rout or ball and warming it up no end. The ball, I mean.”
“No doubt,” his aunt tartly rejoined, “Cressida will fulfil that questionable role at the coming function.”
“Well, you know, darling, I rather think she may,” said Hilary and kissed his aunt good-night.
When Troy hung her red dress in her wardrobe that night she discovered that the recess in which it had been built must be flanked by a similar recess in the Forresters’ room so that the ancient wall that separated them had been, in this section, removed, and a thin partition separated their respective hanging cupboards.
Mrs. Forrester, at this very moment, was evidently disposing of her own garments. Troy could hear the scrape of coat hangers on the rail. She jumped violently when her own name was shouted, almost, as it seemed, into her ear.
“Troy! Odd sort of Christian name.”
Distantly, Colonel Forrester could be heard to say: “… no… understand… famous…” His head, Troy thought was momentarily engulfed in some garment. Mrs. Forrester sounded extremely cross.
“You know what I think about it,” she shouted and rattled the coat hangers, “I said you know…”
Troy, reprehensibly, was riveted in her wardrobe.
“… don’t trust…” continued the voice. “Never have. You know that.” A pause and a final shout: “… sooner it was left straight out to the murderers. Now!” A final angry clash of coat hangers and a bang of wardrobe doors.
Troy went to bed in a daze but whether this condition was engendered by the Lucullan dinner Hilary and Kittiwee had provided or by the juxtaposition of unusual circumstances in which she found herself, she was quite unable to determine.