Here Lies Gloria Mundy

Instead of the modern homestead which he had built in the Sussex countryside, it was a replica, on a smaller scale, of the second of the Cornish hotels I had visited. There was the same mixture of architectural styles, from the mediaeval to the early Georgian, there was the grim gatehouse, and there was the tall turret with the little room at the top where I had slept. I found myself up there again and below me were the coast and the rocks and a tiny cove which had not been there before.

Hardie came into the room. I knew it was he, although some of the time I thought he was Anthony. He invited me to look over the house and took me into a room which I seemed to recognise, although in fact I had never been inside it. It was beautifully decorated and furnished and over the mantelpiece was Ruben’s Adoration of the Magi which, in my dream, I knew to be the original, but it turned into the naked figure of Gloria Mundy and Aunt Eglantine laughed and said, ‘The quickness of the hand deceives the eye,’ before she turned into Hara-kiri again.

He said, ‘She’s in the room which used to be the chapel.’

‘Aunt Eglantine?’ I asked. However, it turned out to be Gloria, as I might have guessed. I thought of Kate and asked where she was.

He said, ‘I have divorced her. Didn’t I tell you? This is to be purely a stag party.’

‘But I’m not going to be married for a good many weeks,’ I said. ‘What are the candles for?’

‘A lyke-wake dirge. If you want to see Gloria, she is on the bed.’

I could see that we were now in a chapel. The windows were small and gave an ecclesiastical appearance to the room and the candles, six of them, were the only form of lighting. The only furniture was a four-poster bed on which lay a coffin with no lid. There in it lay Gloria, her black and red hair neatly arranged, her unprepossessing little face looking rather like that of Kay. There was a cat-like smile on her lips and her predatory hands were clasped together on her breast.

As I looked down on her I knew that one of the candles had gone out. I straightened up and lighted it with a snap of my fingers, but the little room went dark and I found myself in the courtyard in front of the house. Instead of Hardie’s big car there was a hearse and behind it a smaller car with four men in it. I could not see their faces, but I knew that they were William Underedge, Cranford Coberley, Anthony and Anthony’s gardener.

‘We had to bring Platt,’ said Hara-kiri, ‘because we need an experienced man to do the digging.’ At that I knew we were going to bury Gloria.

‘Requiescat in pace,’ I said under my breath.

McMaster either heard the words or guessed them correctly, for he said, ‘Yes, but will she?’

‘Will she what?’

‘Rest in peace. Wotton doesn’t think so. She is to be dealt with tonight. She threatened to haunt him. We can’t allow that.’

‘Surely you don’t believe that sort of rubbish?’ I said.

‘I don’t altogether disbelieve it. Anyway, I have everything ready, but we need your help.’

‘To do what?’

‘Well, never mind that now. We’ll discuss it when the others turn up.’

‘Others? But they are here, Anthony and the rest.’

‘Anthony is bringing a young, tough chap named William Underedge. You and I met him at Beeches Lawn on the day the storm set in. There really ought to be six of us, but the fewer who know of this business the better. What shall we carve on the headstone?’

‘You are at your old game of collecting epitaphs, then. Not in the best of taste on the present occasion, I would have thought,’ I said with grave disapproval.

He took no notice. He took me along to his dining-room. There was food laid out and wine on the table.

‘I’ve given the servants the evening off,’ he said. Then he added, ‘I’m serious, Corin, and your guess is perfectly correct. Don’t you know some rhyme or other about six pall-bearers? Sit down and let’s tuck in. We shall need our strength for this night’s work.’

‘Aren’t we going to wait for the others?’

‘No. They will have something on the road. Spout away.’

I told him that I thought I could oblige him with a couple of verses. I recited,

‘ “Tell me, thou bonny bird,

When shall I marry me?

When six braw gentlemen

Kirkward shall carry ye.” ’

He had brought a notebook to the table, but he did not use it. He wrote the lines on the table-cloth which I now realised had been Gloria’s winding-sheet.

‘Any more?’ he asked. ‘You said a couple.’

‘The only other one I can think of concerns a man. It won’t do for Gloria.’

‘Perhaps it will do for me myself later on.’

‘Hardie,’ I said, ‘did you really love that girl?’

‘Difficult to remember. I suppose I must have done. But come! Your epitaph, for your question needs some excuse.’

‘A very nice derangement of Shakespeare! All right, but I shall alter it a bit from the original. It’s really a