‘I’m very grateful for your offer of a bed for the night,’ said McMaster, when the two drowned rats had gone upstairs, ‘but I think I ought to be off as soon as the storm gives over.’
‘Oh, why?’ asked Celia.
‘Because you’ve offered me Miss Shortwood’s room, and now she’ll be needing it herself.’
‘That’s all right. Kay could have shared with Karen just for one night, but Dame Beatrice has gone, so her room is available. Do stay. But, anyway, it would have been quite easy.’
Kay came downstairs again before Roland reappeared. Over tea, at which the Coberleys were not present as they had been called back to the school before the storm broke, she asked casually, ‘I thought, didn’t I, that Miss Mundy had left? Didn’t she go after the soup incident at lunch? She
‘Oh, she did go,’ said Celia, without glancing at Aunt Eglantine, who was wiping buttery fingers down the front of a black velvet gown. ‘Yes, she went off in a white-hot rage and I didn’t suggest she should stay.’
‘Witches are gate-crashers,’ said Aunt Eglantine. ‘Nobody wants them. They just invite themselves.’
‘What do you mean about Gloria?’ said Anthony to Kay. ‘Of course she went, and no wonder.’
‘Then I think you may take it that she has come back,’ said Roland, who had just entered the room. ‘Tea? Oh, I say, jolly good!’ He seated himself. ‘She’s in the old house. We saw her at the window.’
‘But she couldn’t get in. Coberley has the only key,’ said Anthony.
‘Witches can get in anywhere,’ said Aunt Eglantine.
‘Well, she can’t sleep there. There is no bed and no heating,’ said Celia. ‘As soon as the rain eases off, somebody had better go and bring her back here. I shall have to find somewhere to bed her down, that’s all.’
‘No. I shall take her to a hotel,’ said Anthony. ‘She is not going to make a nuisance of herself here.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ said McMaster. ‘Kate will expect me. I am very grateful, as I said, for your offer of a bed for tonight but, as the weather already seems to be easing off, there is no reason why you should put me up. I’ll be the one to go.’
‘To make room for Gloria? Perish the thought!’ said Anthony.
‘No, really, you mustn’t go,’ said Celia. ‘Anthony can telephone the hotel and a taxi can take the wretched woman there. They know us. We often go there on Saturday evenings to dine and dance. They will take her in and Anthony can settle the bill later. It’s worth it to make sure that she doesn’t come back here. You ring up your wife and tell her you’re staying, and then after dinner we’ll all settle down and have a cosy time. I’m sure you three old college friends will like to get together and talk over old times in Anthony’s den, and I expect the rest of us can amuse ourselves without you. The rain may ease off, but there is bound to be flooding. We don’t want you bogged down like Roland and Kay.’
‘They should have stuck to the main roads, of course,’ said William Underedge.
‘Thanks for the hindsight,’ said Roland Thornbury angrily.
‘Now, now!’ said Karen. ‘Boys must not be boys in mixed company.’ The maid came in to clear away the tea things, and the various parties dispersed to their rooms except for Anthony and Celia. As I, the last to leave, was passing through the doorway into the hall, I heard him say, ‘The storm has upset people. Well, I had better see about Gloria, I suppose.’
‘I’m sure Roland and Kay are mistaken,’ I said, turning round. ‘Coberley let me into the old house this morning. She couldn’t possibly have got in without the key.’
‘Then I had better ring up the school and find out whether Coberley lent it to her,’ said Anthony. ‘It was not right of him if he did. The house is not yet his property.’
‘Do you mind that he took me in there this morning?’
‘My dear chap, of course not. It is one thing for him to take somebody in with him; quite another for him to lend the key to somebody else, particularly to somebody who turned up out of the blue and wished herself on us the way Gloria did.’
‘I thought you might have been glad to see her,’ said Celia. ‘She must have been pretty sure of her welcome to have chanced her arm like that.’
‘What do you mean? I hate the sight of her.’
I closed the door behind me and left them to it. At the top of the stairs I met McMaster with a towel over his arm.
‘Thank God for what Rupert Brooke called “the benison of hot water”,’ he said. ‘What’s happening about our precious Gloria? I hope those two made a mistake and she isn’t still on the premises.’
‘Anthony is going over to find out.’ I was tempted to tell him that Gloria, however involuntarily, had already managed to create friction between husband and wife, but I thought better of it. It was no business of mine, anyway.
When I went downstairs again, I realised that outwardly Anthony and Celia had patched up their differences. Aunt Eglantine had opted for a tray in her room instead of joining us at table, so the company was depleted in numbers, for the Coberleys had decided to remain at the school.
Anthony had been over to the old house and reported that one of the back windows was smashed and that the portrait which Coberley had shown me had disappeared. He supposed that Gloria had broken in and stolen it. He added, without looking at Celia, that he was not sorry it had gone. Gloria had gone, too. However doubtful Anthony had been about the information which Roland and Kay had given him, the disappearance of the picture, together with the broken window (a feature Coberley would have noticed and commented upon when he had shown me over the house) bore out what Roland had said.
Anthony had hammered on the front door, received no answer, and had then gone round to the back and knocked and shouted. There had been no response, so he had climbed in and found the place empty and the picture gone. This he confided only to Celia and myself while we were having cocktails before dinner.
