‘You are such a comfort, Hughie… Yes, the likes of Corinne usually travel with a retinue. I’m sure they’ll be an extremely disagreeable bunch… She never said how many!’
‘I don’t see why you should let that worry you, Aunt Nellie. Plenty of room here.’
‘Servants, darling. Servants.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘The bane of my life. I have the most awful struggle, keeping this place together.’
‘There’s old Hortense. And Provost. And Nicholas.’
Hortense was the cook, Provost the butler, while Nicholas, Provost’s teenage son, was learning to be a footman.
Lady Grylls stared at her nephew owlishly. ‘As you say, Hughie, there’s old Hortense, Provost and Nicholas. Precisely my point. Chalfont’s getting more and more uncomfortable and harder to manage – I don’t suppose it’s only me entering a particularly morose and acrid dotage, is it? I find the draughts are getting worse, the hot-water system less reliable, the dogs less clean -’
Major Payne put down his cup. ‘You haven’t had dogs for ages, darling.’
‘Kept chewing the carpets, that’s why I had to get rid of them. Chalfont will be the end of me. We might have been able to pull it round while Rory was alive – there was still money in the kitty then – but he got this apoplectic look whenever I suggested renovation! I might have been saying, what a pity the jacquerie didn’t succeed, or do let’s join the Labour Party, or some such thing. Rory seemed to equate shabbiness with “good form”… You aren’t warm enough, are you?’ She cast a jaundiced glance at the ancient two-bar electric heater that hissed and crackled in front of the fireplace, giving off a slight odour of burning dust. Pointing towards the high ceiling with her forefinger, she observed that that was where all the heat went.
‘No doubt most country house owners are similarly handicapped,’ said Payne soothingly.
‘Don’t I know it! Why d’you think I avoid Adela de Quesne and that old stick Bobo Markham like the plague? All they do when they manage to get hold of me on the blower is moan about damp and dry rot and trespassing ramblers claiming the right to long-forgotten footpaths and how everything is at near-perdition point.’
Trying to catch her husband’s eye and failing, Antonia said they could always leave, if indeed there were going to be a lot of people coming.
‘Leave? Is that some sort of a joke, Antonia?’ Lady Grylls said sternly. ‘You can’t leave now. I need you here! Goodness. Peverel isn’t any good in a crisis… I don’t think such a thing as “trend-spotting” exists, do you? I am sure he made it up. The way he went on about it last night. Gave me a headache. Too bloody fond of the sound of his own voice.’
‘He promised he’d set his net scouts the task of finding out as much as possible about Corinne -’
‘Ha – net scouts! All bosh, if you ask me, my dear. I wouldn’t believe a word of what Peverel says. He can’t possibly issue commands to anybody simply by sitting in his room and pressing the buttons of his laptop, or whatever that thing’s called – can he?’
‘He probably can, darling,’ Payne said. ‘He can even find you a cheap gardener on the net -’
‘But you must try to be nice to him first,’ Antonia added with a smile.
Lady Grylls suddenly looked fascinated. ‘Goodness – you actually finish each other’s sentences. That doesn’t happen often, you know, that kind of affinity between husband and wife.’
‘How tedious that makes us sound.’
‘Not at all, my dear. A good marriage is not to be sneezed at, especially in this day and age. Yours is clearly one of those that’s been made in heaven. Second marriages are more successful than first ones, or so they say.’
‘We like it.’ Payne poured himself more tea. ‘Maitre Maginot – is that spelled like the line? Who is he anyway?’
‘It’s a she. Some terrible dragon of a woman, by the sound of it. A legal adviser-cum-mentor to Corinne. She seems to have taken over after Mr Lark died. I get the impression she hasn’t been with Corinne that long. She was there as Corinne talked to me, breathing down her neck. I could hear her hissing in the background, prompting. Corinne kept referring to her… Maitre Maginot considered Chalfont Park as a place of refuge une bonne idee. Maitre Maginot doubted whether the death threats were really serious, but wanted to avoid any unnecessary risks. Poor Corinne sounded like a schoolgirl – all timid and halting. Well, I suspect Maitre Maginot of monumental control- freakery. I’ve got to smoke. Where are my cigarettes?’ Lady Grylls peered round the table. ‘It doesn’t help that I am as blind as a bat.’
‘Your hearing should be exceptionally sharp then.’
‘It isn’t. That’s a popular myth… Thank you,’ she said as her nephew struck a match for her. ‘So glad you are a smoker, Hughie. Makes such a difference. Can’t stand it when Peverel looks down his nose each time I light up. What a self-righteous bore he is. Won’t you join me? Where’s that fragrant pipe of yours?’
Payne obligingly produced his pipe and started filling it out of his pouch. His aunt nodded in an approving manner. ‘Now the idea of Maitre Maginot doesn’t seem so repellent. I can see how people turn to drugs – can you?’ She blew smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Mr Jonson described Maitre Maginot as a femme formidable. Don’t you think it tiresome when people pepper their speech with frog?’
‘Terribly tiresome,’ Payne agreed. ‘Apart from being de trop. Unless they are French, that is. Then they can’t help it.’
‘From the way he pontificated, Jonson put me in mind of some sort of superior public schoolmaster – or a family solicitor. You know the type. Dry as a biscuit – omniscient godlike manner – the most annoying little cough. Absolute utter drears. I hope he won’t overstay his welcome. He said he wanted to look around. Does he imagine he might find Corinne’s madman at Chalfont, skulking behind an arras, clutching a knife? D’you think he suspects me of some sort of collusion?’
‘Well, he might have got it into his head the madman is your secret lover,’ Payne said. ‘Gentlewomen of a certain age are notorious for that sort of thing.’
‘Are they?’ Antonia frowned. Hugh did talk awful rot sometimes. ‘Do you mean gentlewomen of a certain age keep secret lovers or that they have a predilection for madmen?’ She was amazed to see Lady Grylls nod.
‘Apparently madmen make jolly good lovers. No inhibitions and oodles of untapped energy.’ Lady Grylls held her cigarette at what in her youth must have been considered a modish angle. ‘I did read about it somewhere.’
‘Might be a madwoman,’ Antonia said. ‘I mean the person behind the death threats.’ Madwomen were always greater fun than madmen – in books and films at least. More terrifying, for some reason… A Single White Male wouldn’t be quite the same thing as A Single White Female. The madwoman in the attic… The female of the species deadlier than the male -
‘More tea?’ Lady Grylls said and she rang for Provost.
Provost was a faded, sandy-haired man in his mid-forties. In the normal course of things he appeared wearing a comfortable cardigan but, presumably on account of Mr Jonson’s visit, he had changed into a black alpaca coat, stiff shirt, winged collar, black tie and striped trousers and looked every inch the stage butler. He was rather a gloomy individual; however, his face lit up the moment Lady Grylls spoke to him. A look of complicity passed between them. She murmured something that to Antonia’s ears sounded like, ‘On with the show!’ – causing Provost actually to smile. It was clear he adored her. Who said the feudal spirit was dead?
‘The Prince of Wales has Debo Devonshire. Provost has me. I am his confidante,’ Lady Grylls declared after he left the room. ‘He says only I understand him. Something in that.’
The tea was brought by Provost’s son Nicholas, a deadly pale, truculent-looking boy of sixteen, with spiked-up hair and a ‘sleeper’ in his right ear. He had left school the year before and come to live with his father. He had been caught sniffing glue and, apparently, was interested in magic. ’Pull up your trousers, Nicholas,’ Lady Grylls ordered in a stentorian voice. ‘Not at half mast when I am around, I’ve told you hundreds of times… How’s the invisible hat doing?’
‘It’s an invisibility cloak, actually,’ he said with a hurt air.
‘He’s mad about those ridiculous children’s books everybody seems to be reading on overcrowded trains,’ she explained later. ‘And he talks of something called “wackybaccy”… Poor souls. Is that some sort of spell?’
Payne cleared his throat. ‘Not quite.’
Provost, it turned out, was what was known as a ‘single parent’. Lady Grylls pronounced the phrase slowly and doubtfully as though it belonged to some foreign tongue. She went on to explain that Mrs Provost – Shirley – had also been in her employment, but she had left her husband six months earlier – for a black man, a bouncer
