Hobby of Murder (7 page)

As soon as she had seen that they were supplied with drinks, she turned away to make her prepared little speech to the next guest who had just come into the room. Andrew could see what an effort it was to her to conceal her shyness. There was no ease or spontaneity in her welcome, only a forced sweetness. The evening, he thought, would be an ordeal rather than a pleasure for her.

The next guest happened to be Felicity Mace. She was in a black jersey and a full flowered skirt and looked neat and pretty and practical. As soon as Anna had turned away from her, she remarked, ‘The Singletons haven’t come yet.’

Andrew had noticed that too.

She went on, ‘But Ernest’s here, trying to hide in that corner. I think I must go and do my best to get him out of it. Since he actually decided to come half the battle’s over.’

‘Or hasn’t begun yet,’ Ian said.

‘Oh no,’ she said with her pleasant, good-natured smile. ‘He’s got perfectly good manners. I don’t really think there’s any risk of his making a scene.’

‘Perhaps Luke Singleton won’t come,’ Mollie said. ‘If Brian’s told him that Ernest’s going to be here, he might have the sense to keep out of sight.’

‘But think what a disappointment that would be for everyone,’ Felicity said. ‘We don’t often have celebrities in Lower Milfrey.’

She moved through the throng towards the corner where Ernest Audley stood. At the same time a tall man entered the room, to be greeted by Anna with her little speech, the same as she had made to the Davidges and to Felicity, except that for a moment she sounded spontaneous, as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, how good of you to come, Inspector! Of course you know we’d have understood perfectly if you’d been far too busy.’

He answered, ‘I’d no intention of missing the evening if I could possibly manage it, Mrs Waldron. Your husband told me there’s venison tonight. Not many people know how to cook venison and it’s not much good if you don’t know how. But I know I can trust him to go about it the right way, and that’s a treat I wouldn’t miss for anything.’

He was a broad-shouldered man, heavy in his build, and though he did not look much more than forty, his short, rough hair was already turning grey. His face was square, with wide-spaced, heavy-lidded eyes. He was in a dark suit that did not fit him very well. It did not actually look too tight for him, but as if perhaps it had been made for him when his muscles had somehow been differently developed from their present condition.

As he came further into the room, his eyes fell on Andrew. He stood still for a moment, looking at him. Then he suddenly came forward, his hand outstretched.

‘Professor Basnett,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you remember me.’

‘Inspector Roland,’ Andrew answered. ‘I certainly do.’

‘We meet in pleasanter circumstances than last time,’ the detective said. ‘You were of great help to us, as I remember it, over that very unpleasant affair at Upper Cullonden. But you may not care to have it recalled.’

‘It isn’t a pleasant memory,’ Andrew admitted, ‘but I’m glad if you think I was of help.’ He turned to Ian and Mollie. ‘Let me introduce an old acquaintance of mine, Inspector Roland, who had to handle the affair of the bomb that killed Sir Lucas Dearden. Inspector, these are old friends of mine with whom I’m staying at the moment, Mr and Mrs Davidge.’

‘And are you particularly interested in Parson Woodforde?’ the Inspector asked. ‘This dinner seems to be held in honour of him.’

‘I’ve heard of him, but never read his diary,’ Andrew said.

‘You should, you should,’ Roland said. ‘Mr Waldron introduced me to him. He’s the only man I know of who actually let his pigs get drunk. As I remember it, he gave his pigs some beer grounds taken out of a barrel he had and they got so drunk that they couldn’t stand up. He says he never saw pigs so drunk in his life.’

‘I must certainly read him,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ve never seen a drunk pig.’

‘I wonder if it improved the flavour of the pork,’ Ian said. ‘I’ll ask Singleton if they’ve ever made any experiments of the kind at the Rockford Agricultural Institute.’

‘Talking of Singleton,’ Roland said, looking round the
room, ‘has our celebrity arrived? I know his brother, but I don’t see him.’

‘No, they aren’t here yet,’ Ian answered.

‘I think I’ve read everything he’s written,’ Roland went on. ‘Hopelessly inaccurate—his police procedure, you know—but such good reading. I can almost believe in the world he’s created, it’s so alive. I’ll be interested to see what he’s like.’

But the next to arrive were not the Singleton brothers, but Eleanor Clancy. She was in a short, sleeveless dress of vivid green, which somehow made her look even bonier and gawkier than she had when Andrew had seen her last. She gave a little crow of pleasure on seeing Ian and Mollie, and clutched Mollie by the arm.

‘Oh, my dears, I’m so glad you’re here before me, because of course I don’t know a soul,’ she said, ‘and really I feel I’ve no right to be here. I mean, I only met Mr and Mrs Waldron that once in your house. Of course it was very interesting to meet them, very interesting. It was so strange recognizing her after all these years. But I still have a sort of feeling I’m imposing on them by coming. I very nearly changed my mind at the last minute and didn’t come. But then I’m so anxious to meet Luke again. I told you I used to know him slightly in the days before he got famous, didn’t I? I wonder if I’ll recognize him as I did Suzie—I mean Anna. I think I’m rather clever at recognizing people. Oh—there he is!’ As she broke off Brian Singleton came into the room, followed by another man.

It struck Andrew that the brothers bore no resemblance to one another. Whereas Brian was tall and broad-shouldered, muscular and ruddy, Luke Singleton was several inches the shorter, slender, sharp-featured and pallid. He held himself with a rigid uprightness, almost as if he was on parade, and his face was bleakly expressionless. It gave no sign of the colourful and violent imagination that
must churn within him. When Anna Waldron hurried to greet him he responded with a small smile and a stiff little bow that was almost Germanic. When Brian introduced him to the Davidges and Andrew, he repeated the bow, accepted a drink and then was led by Brian to meet other people.

‘You see, he didn’t know me!’ Eleanor exclaimed, but she said it almost as if this pleased her, rather than otherwise. She gave a little giggle. ‘But I’d have known him anywhere, although he’s really changed a great deal. He used to look much friendlier, and that stiff way of holding himself, as if he’d like you to think he’s in the army, that’s new. But I suppose he has to keep people at arm’s length or they’d trample all over him. I believe in his way he’s really very shy—oh!’ She broke off again as Sam Waldron appeared in the doorway.

He was wearing a long white apron and a cook’s white hat. As he appeared he clapped his hands, and at once there was silence in the room.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘may I have your attention for a moment?’

He beamed at the company in the room.

‘First of all,’ he said, as the company waited, ‘I want to bid you welcome and to thank you for coming here tonight to help me indulge this whim of mine. It is my desire to give you the kind of meal that the people who lived in this house over two hundred years ago, but who I can’t pretend, as you know, were kin of mine, would have given you as a matter of course on a festive occasion. But you needn’t be frightened. I don’t want to chase you away by making you fear for your digestions. I am not going to give you the actual meal that they would have had, but I will read you a menu of such a meal, then tell you what items I have selected from it, I hope for your pleasure.’

He paused for a moment, took a piece of paper from a pocket in his great white apron, and went on.

‘This was a dinner given by a bishop in his palace to twenty guests. You are about twenty this evening, I believe, but alas, I am no bishop and this is not a palace, and this is not the year 1783, but is near the end of the twentieth century. Had these things been otherwise, however, you would have had two dishes of prodigious fine stewed carp and tench, a fine haunch of venison, a fine turkey poult, partridges, pigeons and sweetmeats, followed by mulberries, melon, currants, peaches, nectarines and grapes. And do you know, as I read it now, that doesn’t seem such an outrageously great meal as it did when I read it first. All the same, I’m not about to inflict it on you. There are tench, caught in our own pond on the common, but no carp, and I hope, after the way in which I have cooked them you will not find they taste of mud. There is a fine haunch of venison. Anna and I brought it back with us from Scotland, and it has been marinading in red wine with herbs and garlic for two days. I hope you will enjoy it. Then there are partridges and pigeons if you can face them, but I have omitted the turkey, and for sweetmeats I have made raspberry tarts, as these seem to have been a particular favourite of our friend Woodforde. For dessert I have omitted the melon and currants, but am proud that I managed to obtain some mulberries. And of course there are Madeira and red and white wines. I’m sorry that Anna and I will not be with you when you sit down to this meal, as we shall be needed in the kitchen, but we hope to join you for coffee. Two excellent ladies, the Bartlett sisters, will wait on you. Now please make your way to the dining-room.’

A burst of clapping followed the end of the speech. Sam Waldron bowed, then disappeared as suddenly as he had
come. Anna remained to usher the guests into the dining-room, then disappeared also.

They filed from one room into the other, finding that they were expected to choose seats for themselves. The room was a long one, with a long, narrow table down the middle of it, and a magnificent arrangement of flowers down its centre. It was set with fine silver, probably Georgian, and glittering glass and was covered with a delicately embroidered cloth which had surely been preserved with loving care in some chest or cupboard for all of two hundred years and was probably a thing of great value. To Andrew, the scene seemed so perfect in its way that it was a pity that anything should be done to disturb it.

Brian Singleton guided his brother to a seat about half way down the table and he himself took one opposite him on the other side of it. Andrew found himself somehow near one end, with the vicar on one side of him and a small dumpling of a woman on the other, who introduced herself as Mrs Delano and who had a rosy, wrinkled face and very short grey hair. He guessed that she was well over eighty, but to judge by all that she told him about herself as they sat side by side, she was involved in all the activities of the village, more often than not as chairman and was taking all those accumulated years in her stride. The vicar startled a good many people by loudly clearing his throat to catch their attention, then saying grace, a ritual to which many of them were not accustomed. But all that he wanted to talk about to Andrew was cricket, about which Andrew happened to know even less than he did about the church, which he had seldom attended except for the marriages or funerals of friends. However, the vicar was a friendly, good-humoured man who found Andrew’s ignorance amusing but forgivable.

The Davidges had separated. Ian was at the far end of the table, Mollie about half way down it, sitting next to
Brian Singleton. Inspector Roland had managed to secure a place on the left hand of Luke Singleton. Felicity Mace was on his right. Eleanor Clancy was beside the Inspector. When Andrew first glanced round the table he thought that Ernest Audley after all had decided not to attend the dinner, but then he saw him only a few places from himself, but with a singularly massive man between them, who nearly concealed him. There was no one else at the table whom Andrew had met before, but he noticed that almost everyone was middle-aged to elderly. It was clear that the Waldrons had felt that the kind of entertainment that they were offering would not appeal to the young.

Andrew found the entertainment, when it came, formidable. Served with skill and efficiency by two women, one of whom had met them when they arrived and both of whom wore long aprons, starched cuffs and mob caps, it was still extremely solid and as course followed course he found himself leaving at least half of each untouched. For a few years now he had almost given up eating a heavy meal in the evening. A sandwich, some fruit and a cup of coffee was what suited him best. Yet he found the tench excellent, the venison, not one of his favourite dishes, more appetizing than he had expected, and a minute portion of partridge just manageable. He skipped the raspberry tarts and waited for the fruit, the fine selection of which looked very tempting. He drank Madeira, something he seldom did, but which he found that in the circumstances he quite enjoyed, and with some curiosity he watched the other people at the table to see how they were faring. Most of them were managing rather better than he was, the vicar, in fact, made a very hearty meal of it, and perhaps, Andrew thought, might have been happier in the eighteenth century than most of the other people there.

He saw that Luke Singleton was very quiet. He talked only a little to either of his neighbours. Yet when he talked
to Felicity a sudden smile of great charm would light up his pale, stern face. Talking to the Inspector it was more likely to remain tight and expressionless. Andrew recognized that when he chose, he could become surprisingly handsome. His features, in their sharp way, were good and all that they needed was some animation to make him no doubt attractive to women. He had at least been able to take Ernest Audley’s wife away from him. As far as Andrew had seen, neither he nor Audley had taken any notice of one another. He had either recognized Eleanor Clancy or had been introduced to her, for occasionally he responded when she talked to him with determination across the Inspector, nodding at what she said if he did not go quite so far as to answer it, and once or twice giving her the benefit of his charming smile.

Brian Singleton appeared to be in extremely good spirits, chatting mostly to Mollie and ignoring a small, fidgety man who was on the other side of him. It was as he watched Brian and Mollie that what was surely an absurd yet still a disturbing thought came into Andrew’s mind. It was simply that they always seemed so relaxed, so contented, one might almost say so happy in one another’s company. Thinking back, he realized that it had always been so when he had seen them together, though at the time he had paid it no attention. And probably there was no reason why he should do so now. Yet all of a sudden he remembered with a slight shock how strangely Mollie had blushed when he had praised her embroidery.