degree, but which Elysee accepted with nonchalance and tacit approval, although, having once made a pass at Elysee myself, I have the impression that, when the right man comes along, she’ll ditch Billie like a pair of torn tights.
All these people had apartments in the house, but Niobe had also converted the stables into a small bungalow which she had named The Lodge. This had been rented by a female recluse. Miss Minnie was, and remained, an enigma. She had opted for the bungalow, Niobe told me, as soon as she had seen the advertisement of it. She claimed that she edited the esoteric journal of a small religious sect called the Panconscious People, but had volunteered no other information about herself. However, Niobe claimed that, like Edmund Blunden’s barn, Miss Minnie was old, not strange.
To mark my return home I had a house-warming party for which I gave word of mouth invitations, calling at each apartment as the simplest and most direct means of getting to know something about my tenants.
I chose a Sunday for my visits to them and set aside the following Sunday for the party. This was because some of the tenants were out and about on their lawful occasions during the week and in the evenings, but on Sundays, as Niobe had told me, all were to be found in residence.
Evesham and Constance gave me a drink, so did Polly and Cassie and the two girls, Billie and Elysee. Sumatra and Irelath refused the invitation, although charmingly. Sumatra said, ‘Sunday is sacred to love-making, Chelion, so, although we are pleased to see you, please go away.’ Irelath said, ‘We’re only young once, Chelion. Can’t afford to let the golden days slip by. Obliged for the invitation all the same.’
Mandrake Shard thanked me for my invitation, which he accepted, but told me apologetically that he did not drink. ‘Used to be an alcoholic. Daren’t touch the stuff now, my dear fellow.’ I promised we would lay on coffee. Coffee, of the instant variety, was also supplied to me by Latimer Targe when I called with my invitation. He said he had run out of whisky. He accepted the invitation and volunteered to ‘bring a couple of bottles, old man, if you like, in case you run short. I know what these literary types can put away when the drinks are on the house’. I assured him that there would be no shortage, but I thanked him for the kind thought and decided that I did not like him very much after all.
Niobe had volunteered to help the cook manufacture the cocktail snacks, but I had vetoed this. ‘Snacks for a dozen people, most of whom probably eat like wolves?’ I said. ‘It would take both of you all the week, and cook would probably give notice. No, my dear girl. I think we’ll let a caterer cope,’ I added firmly.
There remained Miss Minnie, the woman apart. I had felt enough curiosity about her to examine, in Niobe’s office, her tenancy agreement. She had signed it Minnie, D-J (Miss). I took it that D-J were the initials of her baptismal names and was intrigued by the hyphen. I pointed it out to Niobe, who said, to my slight surprise:
‘I don’t believe Minnie is her real name. She is hiding from avaricious relatives, I expect.’
‘Well, I hope she’s not a criminal fleeing from justice,’ I answered lightly.
She did not answer my repeated knocking on her door, so I thought, as it was a fine day, that she might be in the garden at the back of the house. You may have seen descriptions of my property in the newspapers, Dame Beatrice, but perhaps I had better give a short account of its situation and lay-out.
I have mentioned a seaside town and its shops, but actually we had the sea itself at the bottom of the front lawn, just beyond Miss M’s bungalow. The gardens and park were at the back of the house, but in front there was this lawn which went down to the almost semi-circular inlet in a much larger bay on whose opposite shore the white-walled town, less than a mile away as the crow flies, could always be seen from our lawn unless the weather was misty. The deception lay in the fact that to reach the town by road involved a journey of ten miles along narrow twisting lanes (one could not call them roads) which made safe walking out of the question, apart from the added difficulty that the countryside was extremely hilly.
Our inlet was attractive enough at high tide, when the sea almost lapped against the grass verge, less so when the tide was low, for then we had an expanse of uninviting muddy sand between us and the sea. I used to bathe on the incoming tide, but I was (so far as I know) the only resident who ever went for a swim there. Knowing, as I suppose you do, what has happened, you will realise the importance of this and the part it has played in my predicament.
The town was on the south side of the big bay of which our inlet was so tiny a part, so my house faced north. It was entered from an ornate but not unpleasing portico which had been built on at a date much later than the building itself in order, I suppose, to add to the importance of the facade. Below a very high bank which formed one of the boundaries of the front lawn there were the stables (now converted to Miss Minnie’s bungalow), which caused me to think that, before the portico had been added, the true front of the house had faced south, overlooking the gardens and park, for all the best rooms also faced that way. This proved important later on, for it meant that for the other tenants Miss Minnie’s bungalow was out of sight.
(3)
This seems a long preamble, but Rufford has told me not to leave anything out. So far as my house-warming party was concerned, I don’t think there is anything to say. Miss Minnie was not in the garden and I hardly liked to snoop around her bungalow peering in at windows, so I concluded either that she was out or that she chose not to answer my knocking. I got Niobe to type an invitation to the house-warming and asked her to put it, in an envelope, through Miss Minnie’s letterbox. A typed reply came next day, Miss Minnie would thank me not to interrupt her Sunday devotions by hammering on her door and was not interested in drunken orgies. I handed this missive to Niobe, who sniffed and filed it.
‘Worth keeping, I think, the horrid old cat,’ she said. At the party itself Mandrake Shard drank the strong coffee Niobe had prepared for him, backed into a corner to show her some tricks with a piece of string and left soon afterwards, afraid, I suppose, poor little devil, of being tempted to have a drink.
Billie and Elysee got a bit tight and then treated us to the quarrel scene in
Polly Hempseed got drunk and offered to fight Evesham Evans for refusing to swap mates for the evening and night. Cassie McHaig boxed his ears and took him back to their apartment in disgrace.
Evesham Evans, who had handled the situation well, and Constance Kent, who had completely ignored it, proved to be ideal guests in that both remained sober. Latimer Targe got maudlin tipsy and insisted upon kissing Niobe and advising me to make an honest woman of her before it was too late. He stayed long after the others had gone and, in the end, I dragged him to his room and gave him a large whisky doped with aspirin and left him lying on his bed. He was contrite next day and begged my pardon for misbehaving himself with Niobe. He wanted to apologise to her, too, but I headed him off.
‘What a shame!’ said Niobe. ‘He might have kissed me again!’ We discussed Miss Minnie’s unkind and unnecessary comments on what she had supposed our house-warming would be like.
