‘If she
‘Well, let’s hope some of them won’t be able to come. What with Parsifal’s allergies, Diana on a diet and Bluebell being a vegetarian, no wonder Mrs Plack has taken to her bed! It’s enough to send any self-respecting cook to the madhouse, not to mention Garnet’s antisocial habit of trying all his food on his dog before he touches it himself.’
‘It is because Parsifal collects strange herbs for Blue to cook, but as for coming, they’ll all turn up if they know what’s good for them. Nobody knows yet who is mentioned in the Will.’
‘Oh, goodness, give her a chance! She’s only just over seventy. She isn’t going to die just yet.’
‘Everybody has to go at some time or other and she takes big chances scrambling about on the cliffs the way she does.’
‘I wonder whether I could fiddle the invitations a bit.’
‘In what way?’
‘Make a judicious selection and not invite them all.’
‘Those who weren’t invited would find out. Off you go. Get the job done and the cards delivered. The notice is short enough as it is. It is only a question of cards, not letters, I suppose?’
‘Cards, yes. I shall be as formal as the printed message allows. The more off-putting the invitations sound, the more likely they are to be turned down.’
‘Don’t you believe it!’
‘Just wishful thinking, that’s all. Is your own future secure?’
‘Is yours? We may be giving the best years of our lives, as the saying goes, but nothing in this world is a certainty. She takes us both for granted, and that is no advantage when it comes to receiving benefits.’
Maria was the daughter of seventy-five-year-old Mrs Leyden. She was a widow of fifty-two and had been known to refer to herself as her mother’s unpaid housekeeper, but this was an unfair assessment of her position in Romula Leyden’s household. She did pretty much as she pleased most of the time and was generously treated, although her mother had never approved of her marriage to Vannion Porthcawl, an actor who was far more often out of work than in it, and Romula had made no secret of her satisfaction when, having lived long enough to see his twin children, Garnet and Bluebell, reach the age of twenty, he obtained a part in a London pantomime, got drunk on the strength of this and was run over by a bus in Oxford Street and killed. Maria had lived at her mother’s house in Cornwall for the ten years which succeeded this accident.
Fiona Bute, aged thirty-five, was nominally the secretary, but was, in fact, a protegee. Romula had been disappointed in both her own children: Maria had made a marriage which deeply displeased her and Basil had fathered an illegitimate child. What was worse, in Romula’s opinion, was that neither he nor the woman had ever wanted to be married but had lived happily together until the woman died. When this happened, Basil begged his sister Maria to bring up his boy Rupert with her own two children, and unable to live without his lover, he put an end to himself by blowing his brains out.
Bereft, as she saw it, of both her offspring—for she had never had both of them together in her house after they had formed what she regarded as their disastrous partnerships—Romula had taken unto herself the orphaned child of a second cousin, so that Fiona Bute found herself in the position of adopted daughter. When, forgiven after her husband was dead, Maria returned to the maternal fold, Fiona went out of her way to make a friend of her. This was first because, with Maria’s advent, she wondered whether her own standing with her protector was likely to be put in jeopardy, and later on because the two women genuinely liked one another. Between them the house ran smoothly.
‘And now this upset!’ thought Fiona, shoving gilt-edged cards into envelopes she had already addressed. ‘Why on earth does she want to draw the family together for a dinner party? It must be to discuss her Will. But why
She wondered whether she had uttered this thought aloud, for the door opened and a girl of twenty came into the room.
‘Did you call?’ she asked.
‘No, Ruby, I didn’t,’ replied Fiona testily. ‘Here, lick some of these envelopes for me while I go and call up Lunn to act as postman.’
‘What’s all this? A dinner party? Oh, good! We’ll get something decent to eat.’
‘We always get something decent to eat,’ said Fiona. ‘Anyway, I expect you’ll have to stand down, or there won’t be enough men to go round.’
‘I could provide my own. Barnaby would love to come and it would give him a fine chance to meet the
Ruby Pabbay’s position in the household was an ambiguous one. As a girl of sixteen she had been taken on as kitchen-maid, having been recruited from the local orphanage. Less than a year later, Romula, paying an unexpected visit to the kitchen, had heard her singing as she prepared the vegetables. The upshot was that she was being groomed and trained for the concert platform; the peeling of potatoes and the rest of her mundane duties had long been things of the past.
She was a tall, good-looking girl, sensible enough not to abuse her new position, a ready learner of upstairs speech and manners and very anxious to shine in the sphere which Romula had chosen for her. She had proved adept at picking up languages, could sing in French, German and Italian, and called Romula madame in public and
The house was called Headlands and was aptly named since it stood, in a somewhat isolated position, between two of these, Scar Point and St Oleg’s Head. Its immediate surroundings were the downland turf. The views from
