Todd blinked. “The bathroom is further along,” he said. “This is the drying room.”
Bruce laughed. “Oh, I found the bathroom all right,” he said airily. “I took a wrong turning on the way back and ended up . . .” He paused, and then gestured around the drying room,
“here. I ended up in here.”
Todd moved back from the doorway in order to allow Bruce to come out into the corridor. “A rather odd mistake to make,”
he said. “After all, this is not a particularly confusing house. The corridor runs fairly straight, wouldn’t you say? It goes up there, and then comes back. Frankly, I don’t see how one can get lost in this house.”
Bruce smiled. “I have a very bad sense of direction,” he said quickly. “Terrible, in fact.”
Todd said nothing, and so Bruce, forcing the best smile he could manage, began to walk back down the corridor towards the drawing room. His insouciance was misleading; the encounter had been deeply embarrassing. It was bad enough to be found in the drying room, but he wondered whether Todd had seen him pocket, or sporran, the underpants. Would he have said anything, had he seen him? The answer to that was far from obvious. If he had seen him, then one could only speculate as to what he would have thought. Presumably he would have thought of him as being one of those unfortunate people who steal the clothing of others for reasons too dark, too impenetrable, to discuss. That would be so unjust: the thought that he might harbour a trait of that sort was inconceivable. After all, he was a rugby enthusiast, a recently-admitted member of the Royal Institution of Chartered
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Surveyors, and . . . It was difficult to put one’s finger on other badges of respectability, but they were certainly there.
Well, there was nothing that he could do about it. What did it matter if Todd thought that of him? He reached the drawing room before he managed to provide himself with an answer to that question.
“Bruce got lost,” said Todd in a loud voice, behind him. “He ended up in the drying room.”
Sasha, who had been talking to Lizzie, looked up in surprise.
“Lost in our house?” she exclaimed. “How did you manage that?”
“I took a wrong turning,” said Bruce. He turned to look reproachfully at Todd. A host had no excuse to embarrass a guest like this, even if the host was the guest’s boss.
“Very strange,” said Lizzie, looking coolly at Bruce. “So you ended up among all the family underwear?”
Sasha’s head swung round sharply, and Lizzie found herself fixed with a hostile stare from her mother. Bruce, who was now blushing noticeably, turned to look out of the window.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said.
“The nice thing about this job,” observed the functions manager of the Braid Hills Hotel, “is that it has its surprises.”
His assistant, surveying the room in which the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball was to be held, nodded his agreement. The room, although well-decorated with several sprays of flowers, had only two tables, one with four chairs around it and one with two. And even if the hotel had fielded its best napery – starched and folded to perfection – and chosen bright red glassware – there was a distinctly desolate feel to the almost-empty room.
“You’d think that they would have sold just a few more tickets,” said the assistant, adding, “in an area like this.”
The manager shrugged. “I’m sure that they did their best.
Still, I cannot understand why they’ve insisted on keeping the tables apart. Surely it would have been much better for all six of them to sit together – somehow less embarrassing.”
When Sasha had called round earlier that day to review arrangements, he had suggested to her that the tables be put together, but she had firmly refused.
“I wouldn’t mind in the least,” she said. “But my husband has views on the matter.”
So the tables had remained apart, and they were still apart when the first guests, Ramsey and Betty Dunbarton, arrived in the hotel bar, several minutes before the arrival of the Todd party.
Ramsey Dunbarton was a tall, rather distinguished-looking man who was only now beginning to stoop slightly. He thought of himself as being slightly on the Bohemian side, and had been a stalwart of amateur dramatic circles and the Savoy Opera Group.
On more than one occasion he had appeared on the stage of the Churchhill Theatre, most notably – and this was the height of his stage career – as the Duke of Plaza-Toro in
Betty Dunbarton was the daughter of a Dundee marmalade manufacturer. She had met Ramsey at a bridge class at the Royal Overseas League, and they had ended up marrying a year or so later. Their marriage had been childless, but their life was a full 146
one, and the Conservative Ball was just another event in a busy social round. The following day they were due to go to lunch at the Peebles Hydro; the day after that there was a meeting of the Friends of the Zoo (with lunch in the Members’ Pavilion); and so it went on.
Ramsey and Betty were standing near the bar when the Todd family, accompanied by Bruce, came in. Ramsey noticed that Todd did not smile at him, which was hurtful, he thought. That man doesn’t like me, he said to himself. I’ve done nothing to deserve it, but he doesn’t like me. And as for that daughter, that Lizzie, she was such a fright, wasn’t she? What could one say about her? – one could really only sigh.
