Death of a Glutton

Inverness and a cab up. Don’t you think I’m clever?”

Maria rallied with a visible effort. “Peta, I’m sure this isn’t your scene.”

“Darling, of course it is. You know me…the merry widow. Oh, there she is. You haven’t met my niece, Crystal Debenham, have you? Just back from finishing school in Switzerland.”

Maria stared. Disaster upon disaster. Crystal was so very beautiful in a smouldering kind of way: voluptuous figure, smoky-blue eyes, masses of brown hair highlighted with silvery-blonde streaks, pouting mouth, and wearing a dress so short it made her long, long legs look like a dream of desire. What man was going to look at any of her female clients with Crystal around?

“Pleased to meet you,” said Crystal in a languid, husky voice. She would have once, thought Priscilla, half- amused, half-exasperated, been called a vamp.

“Perhaps there are no rooms free, Peta dear,” said Maria.

“No, I called before I left London and got a couple of rooms.”

“Wouldn’t you like to change?”

“I never go in for that formal stuff,” said Peta cheerfully. She turned round. “This your lot?”

Headed by Mary French, who would have been there much earlier had she not laddered two pairs of tights and spent some time looking for another pair, came the clients of Checkmate.

Crystal just stood and smouldered. The men clustered round her and the females stood a little way away, watching gloomily, not even talking to each other.

“What can I get you to drink?” Priscilla asked Maria.

“Get me a double gin,” said Maria waspishly. She looked at Peta with loathing.

“And get a double arsenic for her.”

? Death of a Glutton ?

2

The best laid schemes o’ mice and men

Gang aft a-gley.

—Robert Burns

To Maria’s relief, the little knot of men around Crystal began to break up and she was able to seize arms and introduce the various clients to their proper partners. Crystal pouted slightly and swayed over to join her aunt.

The fact was, thought the ambitious Matthew Cowper shrewdly, that Crystal Debenham was the kind of girl one took to the pub to impress the other fellows. She was not the kind one married. She was extremely dull and had no talent for conversation whatsoever, the narcissistic Crystal considering looks enough.

Maria made it firmly obvious who was meant for whom, and Matthew was not sure that Jenny Trask was at all suitable. She was painfully shy and he wanted a firm, confident woman to help him in his career. The blonde beauty he had seen on his arrival, the one he had been so sure was meant for him, had turned out to be nothing more than an hotel waitress. He glanced at Priscilla and now saw only the uniform and not the beauty.

Jenny, ever polite, was struggling to make conversation by telling him about her job. He barely listened, his eyes roving over the rest of the females and coming to rest on Mary French, the schoolteacher, she of the sticking- out ears and buckteeth. Now there was class, from her pale, arrogant, self-satisfied look to her pearls and expensively dowdy dress. She had a hectoring carrying voice. He waited until Jenny had paused for breath, said, “Excuse me,” and slid off.

John Taylor was relieved to see him. Although he was well aware that he, John, was old and could not expect a young beauty to be put his way, Mary appalled him. When Matthew came up, John crossed the room and joined Jenny, found out she was a legal secretary in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in an office near his own, and happily began to talk shop.

Sir Bernard Grant barely saw the grey Jessica Fitt. He could not believe this was to be his partner. So he looked beyond Jessica’s dull face, looking for another candidate, and fell on Deborah Freemantle, who was bouncing and wriggling in front of Peter Trumpington. He heard her loud laugh and decided she looked like more fun than anyone else there. So he joined her, and Peter Trumpington, who for all his shallow-mindedness was nonetheless kind, went to speak to Jessica Fitt.

Maria took a deep breath of relief. They were not pairing off the way she had intended, but at least they were all talking to each other and the beautiful Crystal was ignored. Besides, once they found their place cards at the dinner table, they would once more be with their rightful partners.

But when she led the way into the dining room, it was to find that Peta had already taken the chair at the head of the table, with Crystal next to her. Then the others just ignored the place cards and sat down and talked to the person they had been talking to before.

The first course was cock-a-leekie soup, Tommel Castle priding itself on its traditional Scottish dishes. Peta rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She gurgled, she slurped, she inhaled soup like a human vacuum cleaner, first breaking great clumps of bread into it and mashing them up with her spoon.

“Who on earth is that great fat woman?” muttered Sir Bernard to Deborah. Deborah laughed wildly and said, “Gosh! I don’t know. Sickening, isn’t she?” and Sir Bernard began to think more and more that Deborah was his kind of girl.

The soup was followed by dishes of prawns in a delicate sauce. Peta wolfed hers down and turned to John Taylor, who was on her other side and looking at her in horrified amazement, and said, “I see you’re not eating yours,” and before he could protest, snatched his dish and ate those too.

The next course was unfortunately a rich venison casserole with a wine sauce and the casserole was placed at the head of the table in front of Peta. Peta waved Priscilla away and said she would serve. So the others soon found themselves looking down at small portions and then at the heaped mound of meat and sauce on Peta’s plate. She bent down and snuffled at it appreciatively before diving in. She also ate great piles of vegetables and three large baked potatoes with a whole dairy of butter. She then called for more bread and, pulling the casserole close to her ballooning bosom, she began to mop up the gravy, making appreciative smacking sounds with her lips.

Priscilla was sorry for Maria. She wanted to tell her that her party was going to be a success, not despite Peta, but because of Peta. They were all being drawn together by a communal resentment. And Crystal, because of being the horror’s niece, had rapidly lost any charms she might have had in the eyes of the assembled men.

The dessert was unfortunately meringues with cream and chocolate sauce. Powdered meringue soon dusted the glutton’s face, almost covering up the gravy stains. When the petits fours came along, Peta upended the plate of them into her capacious handbag. “I’ll keep these for later,” she said, beaming all around.

Maria turned to the hovering Priscilla and said in a thin voice, “Coffee in the lounge, I think, and some more petits fours, please. Peta, darling, you have had an exhausting journey. Why don’t you go and lie down?”

“You know, I think I might,” said Peta and yawned, a cavernous yawn, showing a coated tongue and bad teeth. She winked at Sir Bernard, “I’ll see you in the morning, sweetie.”

Crystal floated off in the wake of her aunt. Maria arranged her guests in a corner of the lounge, glad no other hotel guests were present.

John Taylor rose to his feet and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat and faced the group with that steely look in his eye and commanding appearance which had made him a highly paid prosecuting counsel. He began his cross-examination. “Now, Miss Worth, tell us (“in your own words,” thought Jenny) about this Peta woman. Who is she?” He stabbed a finger at Maria. “Why is she here? Is she one of your clients? Tell us.”

“If you will allow me to speak, I will,” said Maria, who had already made up her mind what she had to do. “Mrs Peta Gore is my partner. She put up half the money to help me get started. I tried to buy her out last year, but she would not go. I tried to keep this excursion to the Scottish Highlands a secret from her and I thought she was in Hungary. But she found out where I was. This has happened before, but not at anything so ambitious as this. So I am going to make you an offer. Each of you. Anyone here who has not found a marriage partner by the end of the week will have the cost of the hotel bill and travel refunded.”

There was a long silence. Then Deborah spoke up. “I think that’s jolly fair,” she cried. Sir Bernard said, “I’ll