“Duncan won’t expect me for an hour,” she said evenly. Her perfume was light and fresh. New to me, irritatingly. It’s one of my vanities that I can guess scents. “I was on my way to leave this list in your room.”
“See you there, then,” I said, just as evenly as her.
“Don’t be too long, Lovejoy.” Her voice was a murmur.
I watched her recede from sight in the gold glow, then returned for a quick minute to Dame Wiggins. One of the Wonderful Cats would land in the gunge if it didn’t watch out. Like Dutchie and Dobson. Except they’d only two lives between them. A cat’s got nine. Right?
« ^ »
—— 27 ——
One of the worst feelings in the world must be when you throw a party and nobody comes. I mean, that Bible character who dragged in the halt, lame, and blind has my entire sympathy. I began to get cold feet, though all portents were for go. Letters were still arriving. We’d had three calls from Mr. Ruthven, banker, ecstatic because nearly fifty firms or unknowns had transferred sums to the Caithness National out of the blue.
Pastor Ruthven, notable nonassassin, blessed our enterprise. The phone was constantly trilling, bloody nuisance. Mrs. Moncreiffe had her hair done.
Outside was like Highland Games day. Yellow ribbons on metal hooks fenced the tracks all the way from the bridge over Dubneath Water to Tachnadray. Robert and his men, now a staunch six, had put night-glitters on the ribbons, good thinking, and had laboriously mowed a spare field. Five hundred cars and eight coaches, he said. A man was sacked for blabbing in the MacNeish’s pub; drummed out of the Brownies, lost his badge, and got mysteriously convicted and clinked for a week’s remand by magistrate Angus McGunn.
A trailer arrived from Thurso carrying a kind of collapsible canvas cloister. Mrs. Buchan blew up, learning that Trembler was making inquiries among Inverness caterers, but I quashed her campaign when one caterer undertook to run a grub-and-tea tent and give us a flat fee. I agreed the same for a bar, plus a percentage. The catalogs were fetching in six times the printing costs. Hamish, maniacal by now, was doing a color catalog of fifty-one pages with a “research index,” meaning notes, by Mr. Cheviot Yale, Auctioneer and Fellow of this and that. The colored versions were for sale at the door, at astronomic cost to the buyer. Trembler prophesied they’d sell all right. A firm from Inverness brought a score of portable loos for an extortionate fee. They looked space-age, there on the grass, white and clinical. The local St. John’s Ambulance undertook to send a couple of Medical Aid people, in case.
The estate had never seen days like it, not since the laird’s spending sprees. Mrs.
Buchan’s kitchen was going nonstop. Duncan finished his last piece, a pedestal case.
This is the 1820 notion of a filing cabinet, with five hinged leather-covered cardboard boxes in a tier. It sounds rubbish, but with its lockable mahogany frame it looked grand. I explained how to age it with dilute bleach and a warm stove. Duncan’s products, a round dozen by now, would go into the auction as extra lots on the addendum.
It felt like a holiday. Trembler went off south for a well-earned, er, rest after ordering two of his exotic ladies from a Soho number. Tinker was paralytic, but messily filling out in the kitchen. It was there I roused him while Mrs. Buchan’s merry minions were screaming-laughing over laundry in the adjoining wash-house. He came to blearily, hand crooked for a glass.
“Noisy bleeders,” he groused while I poured. Mrs. Buchan’s latest offering was like tar.
He slurped, shook the foundations with a cough, focused. “Yeah, Lovejoy.”
“Dutchie and Dobson.” I waited for his cortex to reassemble in the alcohol fog. “Dutchie back from the Continent?”
“Never.” He hawked, spat into the fire.
“You sure? Our local dealers say you can set your clock by Dutchie’s reappearances.”
“Not this time, Lovejoy.”
“Tinker. I reckon Dobson did that driver, and Tipper Noone. Watch out for Dutchie and Dobson.”
“Fine chance, Lovejoy,” he croaked witheringly. “Them bastards are too lurky.”
They’d both be here. I already knew that. The only question remaining was their attitude towards me. I was pretty confident Dutchie wouldn’t—maybe couldn’t—harm me. But that cunning silent knife-carrier Dobson … I hunched up and sipped Tinker’s ale for warmth. What’s the expression, an angel walking over your grave? I thought, some angel.
View Day’s always a letdown, with added tension, same as any rehearsal. Everybody was keyed up. Trembler returned looking like nothing on earth but steadying as the day wore on. Tinker spent the morning “seein’ the bar’s put proper,” meaning sponging ale.
Michelle checked the numbers, and fought Trembler over sticky labels on the oil paintings. I kept out of it. Robert and Duncan drilled the retainers twice. No hitches.
They came. First a group of three cars, hesitantly following the signs. They’d driven from Eastbourne. Then a minibus from George MacNeish’s tavern with the six overnighters we already knew about. Duncan’s men had erected signs everywhere.
Nobody had an excuse for “accidentally” getting lost. Our people were on station in doorways, corridors, and one on each of the seven staircases. Five hawk-eyed men simply stood on the grass staring at the big house, Hector with Tessie and Joey spelling them in sequence every twenty minutes. One thing was plain to even the casual viewer: Security was Tachnadray’s thing.
Our viewing was timed for eleven a.m. to four in the afternoon. The trickle was a steady flow by noon. By one it was a crowd. Two o’clock and the nosh tent was crammed, the bar tent actually bulging at the seams. A coach arrived. The car park was half full, and filling. But throughout I kept a low profile. From the west wing’s upstairs corridors I could see the main doorway. I had a pile of sandwiches against starvation and a tranny against boredom in case Dutchie and Dobson didn’t show. I sat on the window ledge watching.
There was only one way for them to enter the house, and that was up the balustraded steps. And one way out, the same. As people arrived, I counted with one of those electronic counters. Like watching an ants’ nest in high summer. I recognized many, smiling or scowling as I remembered their individual propensities.
