He looked down at her with affection, enjoying the cool beauty of her blonde looks. When he received his knighthood, as he was sure he would, she would look regal in the press photographs.
He bent and kissed her again. “I shall go and put my heel in the plug hole. I hope your mama has put us together at dinner.”
“Probably not,” said Priscilla. “But we shall survive.”
Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant, clad only in pink French knickers and transparent bra, was sitting on the end of her bed, painting her toenails scarlet.
Her husband was sitting at the dressing table trying to add some more curl to his large handlebar moustache with his wife’s electric hair curler.
“Your roots are showing,” he said, studying the top of his wife’s bent head in the mirror.
“Well, they’ll just need to show. I once went to the hairdresser here and the girls were so busy gossiping they nearly burned my scalp off. Seen Withering yet?”
“No,” said Freddy Forbes-Grant, “but I’ve seen that rotter, Bartlett.”
“Damn!” Vera’s hand shook suddenly, and the bottle of nail varnish tipped over on the carpet.
“Used to be pretty thick with him, didn’t you?” pursued Freddy.
“Me? Course not. For God’s sake, bring over that bottle of remover and help me clear up this mess.”
“Peter’s here,” said Diana Bryce, flouncing into Jessica Villiers’s room and banging the door behind her.
Jessica had been busy applying blusher to her cheeks. She stopped with the brush in mid-air. “Awkward for you,” she said with an ugly laugh.
“Poor, poor Jessica,” said Diana sweetly. “You will maintain that fiction that Peter ditched me. Everyone knows I ditched
“Well, I ditched him before he got engaged to you on the rebound,” said Jessica breathlessly.
Diana eyed her with malicious amusement. “Is that the case? I really must tease him about it.”
“And I must tease him about being given the push by you.”
Both girls glared at each other, and then Diana gave a little laugh. “What nonsense we’re talking. Who cares about him anyway? I thought we came to see the playwright.”
“Yes,” said Jessica slowly. “I had almost forgotten.”
Henry Withering enjoyed dinner that evening immensely. He enjoyed the excellent food and the fake baronial dining room, hung with medieval banners that had been made in Birmingham twenty years before, when Colonel Halburton-Smythe had decided to redecorate the castle himself. He thought it was like a stage setting. The Halburton-Smythes did not run to footmen, but there were plenty of efficient Highland maids to serve the cold salmon hors d’oeuvres, followed by roast saddle of venison. There was a stately English butler to pour the wine. Lady Helmsdale, who was seated on Henry’s right, did not once look at Captain Bartlett. Henry was rather sorry for Priscilla, who was at the other end of the table, with Lord Helmsdale on one side and old Sir Humphrey on the other. Henry had at first been wary of the good-looking captain, knowing of old his reputation with women, but in the drawing room before dinner, Priscilla had shown not the slightest flicker of interest in Peter Bartlett. Jessica and Diana had made a dead set at Henry, all very flattering and just as it should be. The fameless years of neglect were gone.
Henry was so busy being happily deafened by Lady Helmsdale’s loud and fulsome compliments that he was unaware of any other conversation at the table.
Mrs Halburton-Smythe was a faded blonde woman with quick, timid movements. She was so often dominated by her husband that she rarely voiced an opinion on anything. She would even have allowed Priscilla to invite that dreadful joke of a policeman if her husband had not been so much against it. But it could be said in Mrs Halburton- Smythe’s favour that she hardly ever listened to gossip, and that was why she had seated Captain Peter Bartlett between Jessica and Diana. Jessica tried to ignore the captain by talking to Jeremy, who was on her other side, while Diana picked at her food and stared sulkily in front of her, wondering what on earth Henry Withering found so fascinating about the terrible Lady Helms-dale.
The captain, who had been drinking steadily, glanced to right and left and announced suddenly, “Well, I must say you two girls make a lousy pair of po-faced dinner companions.”
Jessica shied like a horse and turned her head away. Diana affected not to hear. Opposite the captain, Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant leaned forward. “I’ll entertain you, darling,” she said in her husky whisky voice, “if you don’t think it rude to talk across the table.”
“I’m rather like you, old girl,” slurred the captain. “Anything’s permissible so long as it don’t frighten the horses.”
“Oh, Peter.” Vera gave a nervous laugh. “You’re such a little boy when you try to shock. Do you think you’ll get the first brace?” Word of the bet had already gone around the guests.
“Who knows?” said Peter. “Damned birds have been dying off like flies. ‘S all a Communist plot to ruin sport.”
“What on earth have the Reds got to do with a lot of game birds?” asked Vera.
“I’ll tell you,” said the captain, leaning forward and putting his elbow in the remains of some cauliflower
“Acid rain?”
“Yes, they take it up frozen, see, in planes, above the moors, and they drop out great chunks of frozen acid rain on the grouse.”
“Oh, I see. They’re
“Y’know, Vera,” said the captain, roaring to make himself heard above the boom of Lady Helmsdale’s voice, “you are one very dumb blonde…or would be if you got your roots done. Never seen them so black.”
“There’s no need to get so bloody personal,” snapped Vera.
“What’s the matter?” demanded her husband, Freddy, sharply.
“Peter’s had too much to drink, that’s all,” whispered Vera. “Ignore him.”
But Peter Bartlett had found a new quarry. “Turn the volume down a bit, Agatha,” he shouted suddenly in Lady Helmsdale’s direction. “Can’t hear myself think.”
“You never can,” roared Lady Helmsdale. “Don’t you know it’s because you never think?”
With one of his inexplicable changes of mood the captain sent Lady Helmsdale an amused wink and then turned to Diana, “You are looking very fetching tonight,” he said. “I like that little black number. Suits you.”
Priscilla had met Peter Bartlett before but had never spent more than a few minutes in his company. She was amused to see how the obnoxious captain so easily turned on the charm. Diana was beginning to giggle and blush. Peter then said something across the table to Vera, who looked first startled, then gratified. Then he turned to Jessica and began to whisper in her ear until the frozen look of disapproval left her face and she began to look happy and excited. Priscilla then looked down the table to where Henry was laughing uproariously at something Lady Helmsdale had said.
He really is a pet, thought Priscilla. Mummy and Daddy are so pleased. It’s nice to do the right thing for once. Poor Hamish. I do hope he won’t feel the snub too painfully.
At that moment, Hamish was leaning on his garden gate outside the police station, enjoying the quiet evening. His slavering pet mongrel, Towser, as usual, had flopped down to sleep across his master’s boots. Behind Hamish, from the back of the police station, came the mournful clucking of the hens.
The only thing that worried him was where to find a dinner jacket for the party. He had quickly recovered from the shock of Priscilla’s engagement. Hamish had long ago discovered that it was easier to tuck painful things he could do nothing about at the present away into a far corner of his brain until such time as he could take some action.
He did not know the Halburton-Smythes had written to him not to come. Jessie, their dizzy housemaid, was walking out with Geordie, the baker’s boy, and had met her swain only five yards from the police station. The encounter had made her forget the reason for her having been sent to the village. The housekeeper, Mrs Wilson, had told her to buy a packet of soap powder when she was down in the village, and Jessie remembered only that request. She did not find the note, undelivered, still in her apron pocket until two days later.
