Tied Up in Tinsel (10 page)

She drank some more champagne. “Tell me,” she began recklessly, “Mr. Smith. Why do you — or do you —”

But Mr. Smith was paying no attention to Troy. His attention was fixed upon Mervyn, who had returned and was speaking to Blore. Blore again bent over his employer.

“Moult, sir,” he intoned, “is not on duty in the hall.”

“Why the devil not!” Hilary snapped quite loudly.

“I’m sure I can’t say, sir. He received instructions, sir. Very clear.”

“All right, well
find
him, Blore. He’s wanted with the Colonel. Mrs. Forrester won’t leave the Colonel by himself. Go
on
, Blore. Find him. Go yourself.”

Blore’s eyebrows mounted his forehead. He inclined, returned to Mervyn, and raised a finger at Nigel, with whom he finally left the dining-room. Mervyn remained in sole command.

Hilary looked round his table and said, laughingly, and in French, something about the tyranny of one’s dependents which, Troy imagined, was incomprehensible to all but a fraction of his guests.

She turned to Major Marchbanks. She was now fairly certain within herself that she would be showing great strength of character if she were to refuse any more champagne. She looked severely at her glass and found it was full. This struck her as being exquisitely funny but she decided not to interfere with it.

“Who,” asked Major Marchbanks, “is Moult?”

Troy was glad to find that she was able to give him a coherent answer. “Do you,” she asked, “find this party very extraordinary?”

“Oh, but completely fantastic,” he said, “when one looks at it objectively. I mean four hours ago I was doing the honours at the Vale Christmas feast and here I am with three of my warders, drinking Bill-Tasman’s champagne and waited upon by a company of you know what.”

“One of them — Blore, I think — was actually at the Vale, wasn’t he?”

“Oh yes. He’s an Old Boy. I recommended him. With appropriate warnings, you know. I really think he rather likes displaying his waiter’s expertise for us Vale persons. He was at the top of his profession, was Blore.”

“He’s given me a morsel too much to drink,” Troy said carefully.

Major Marchbanks looked at her and burst out laughing. “You don’t tell me you’re tiddly?”

“That would be going too far, which is what I hope I haven’t. Gone,” Troy added with dignity.

“You seem all right to me.”

“Good.”

“I say,” Hilary said, leaning towards Troy and speaking across the intervening guests, “isn’t it too boring about Moult? Aunt Bed won’t budge until he relieves her.”

“What can he be doing?”

“Flown with success, I daresay, and celebrating it. Here’s to your bright eyes,” Hilary added and raised his glass to her.

Troy said. “Look. I’ll nip up and relieve Mrs. Forrester. Do let me.”

“I can’t possibly —”

“Yes, you can. I’ve finished my lovely dinner. Don’t stir, please, anybody,” said Troy and was up and away with a celerity that greatly pleased her. “At least,” she thought, “I’m all right on my pins.”

In the hall the children’s supper party was breaking up and they were being drafted back into the drawing-room. Here they would collect their presents, move to the library, and gradually be put in order for departure. On their account the party would be an early one.

At the foot of the stairs Troy encountered Blore.

“Have you found Moult?” she asked.

“No, madam,” Blore said, making a sour face. “I don’t understand it at all, madam. It’s very peculiar behaviour.”

(“So,” Troy irrelevantly thought, “is killing a busboy while you’re carving a wing-rib.”)

She said, “I’m going up to relieve Mrs. Forrester.”

“Very kind, I’m sure, madam. And too bad, if I may say so, that you should be put upon.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Troy lightly.

“
Moult
!” Blore said. He actually spoke softly but with such a wealth of venom that Troy was quite taken aback. She continued upstairs and finding herself a bit swimmy in the head, went first to her own room. There she took two aspirins, put a cold sponge on the back of her neck, opened her window, stuck her head out, and gasped.

Two snowflakes touched her face: like the Ice Maiden’s fingers in Hans Andersen. The moon was up. She paused for one moment to look at the deadened landscape it offered, and then shut her window, drew her curtains, and went to call on the Forresters.

Colonel Forrester was in bed and awake. He was propped up by pillows and had the look of a well-washed patient in a children’s ward. Mrs. Forrester sat before the fire, knitting ferociously.

“Thought you might be Moult,” she said.

Troy explained her errand. At first it looked as if Mrs. Forrester was going to turn her down flat. She didn’t want any dinner, she announced, and in the same breath said they could send up a tray.

“Do go, B,” her husband said. “I’m perfectly well. You only fuss me, my dear. Sitting angrily about.”

“I don’t believe for a moment they’ve really looked for him, I said —”

“All right, then.
You
look. Go and stir everybody up. I bet if you go, they’ll find him.”

If this was cunning on the part of the Colonel, it was effective. Mrs. Forrester rammed her knitting into a magenta bag and rose.

“It’s very kind of you,” she snarled at Troy. “More than that yellow doll of Hilary’s thought of offering. Thank you. I shall not be long.”

When she had gone the Colonel bit his underlip, hunched his shoulders, and made big eyes at Troy. She made the same sort of face back at him and he gave a little giggle.

“I do so hate fusses,” he said, “don’t you?”

“Yes, I do rather. Are you really feeling better?”

“Truly. And I’m
beginning
to get over my disappointment though you must admit it
was
provoking for me, wasn’t it?”

“Absolutely maddening.”

“I hoped you’d understand. But I’m glad Moult did it nicely.”

“When did you decide to let him?”

“Oh — at the last moment. I was actually in the dressing-room, putting on my robe. I got a bit stuck inside it as one can, you know, with one’s arms above one’s head and one’s mouth full of material, and I rather panicked and had a Turn. Bad show. It was a crisis. There had to be a quick decision. So I told him to carry on,” said the Colonel as if he described a tight corner in a military engagement, “and he did. He put me in here and made me lie down and then he went back to the dressing-room to put on the robe. And carried on. Efficiently, you thought?”

“Very. But it’s odd of him not to come back, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. He should have reported at once. Very poor show indeed,” said the Colonel, drawing himself up in bed and frowning.

“You don’t think he could have gone straight to your dressing-room to take off the robe? There’s a door from the passage into the dressing-room, isn’t there?”

“Yes. But he should have made his report. There’s no excuse.”

“Would you mind if I just looked in the dressing-room? To see if the robe is there?”

“Do, do, do, do,” said the Colonel.

But there was no golden robe in the dressing-room which, as far as Troy could judge, was in perfect order. A little crimson room, it was, with a flock wallpaper and early Victorian furniture. Heavy red curtains on brass rings were drawn across the windows. It might have been a room in Bleak House, and no doubt that was exactly the impression Hilary had intended it to make. She looked in the cupboards and drawers and even under the bed, where she found a rather battered tin box with “Col. F. F. Forrester” painted in white letters on it. Remembering Hilary’s remarks upon their normal luggage she supposed this must contain the Forresters’ valuables.

Somewhere, a long way off, a car door slammed. She thought she could hear voices.

She half opened the curtains and heard more doors slam and engines start up. The guests were leaving. Rays from invisible headlamps played across the snowy prospect, horns sounded, voices called.

Troy rattled the curtains shut and returned to the Colonel.

“Not there,” she said. “I suppose he left it in the cloakroom downstairs. I must ask Cressida — she’ll know. She took his whiskers off.”

“Well, I’m jolly furious with Moult,” said the Colonel, rather drowsily. “I shall have to discipline him, I can see that.”

“Did he show himself to you? In the robe? Before he went downstairs?”

“Eh? Did he, now? Well, yes, but — Well, in point of fact I dozed off after my Turn. I do that, you know,” said the Colonel, his voice trailing away into a drone. “After my Turns. I do doze off.”

He did so now, gently puffing his cheeks in and out and making little noises that reminded Troy of a baby.

It was very quiet in the bedroom. The last car had left and Troy imagined the houseparty standing round the drawing-room fire talking over the evening. Or perhaps, she thought, they are having a sort of hunt-for-Moult game. Or perhaps he’s been found sleeping it off in some forgotten corner.

The Colonel himself now slept very soundly and peacefully and Troy thought there was really no need for her to stay any longer. She turned off all the lights except the bedside lamp and went downstairs.

She found a sort of public meeting going on in the hall. The entire staff was assembled in a tight, apprehensive group being addressed by Hilary. Mrs. Forrester balefully sat beside him as if she was in the chair. Mr. Smith, smoking a cigar, stood on the outskirts like a heckler. Cressida, looking exhausted, was stretched in a porter’s chair with her arms dangling and her feet half out of her golden sandals.

“— and all I have to tell you,” Hilary was saying, “is that he must be
found
. He must be somewhere and he must be
found
. I know you’ve got a lot to do and I’m sorry and really it’s too ridiculous but there it is. I don’t know if any of you have suggestions to make. If you have I’d be glad to hear them.”

From her place on the stairs Troy looked at Hilary’s audience. Blore. Mervyn. Nigel. Vincent. Kittiwee. The Boy. Standing further back, a clutch of extra helpers, male and female, brought in for the occasion. Of these last, one could only say that they looked tired and puzzled.

But the impression was very different when she considered the regular staff. Troy was sure she hadn’t concocted this impression and she didn’t think it stemmed from preknowledge. If she hadn’t known anything about their past, she believed, she would still have thought that in some indefinable way the staff had closed their ranks and that fear had inspired them to do so. If they had picked up death masks of their faces and clapped them over their own, they could scarcely have been less communicative. This extravagant notion was given a kind of validity by the fact that — surely — they were all most uncommonly pale? They stared straight in front of themselves as if they were on parade.

“Well,” Hilary said, “Blore? You’re the chief of staff. Any ideas?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. We have made, I think I may say, sir, a thorough search of the premises. Very thorough, sir.”

“Who,” Mrs. Forrester snapped out, “saw him last?”

“Yes. All right. Certainly, Aunt Bed. Good question,” said Hilary, who was clearly flustered.

There was a considerable pause before Cressida said: “Well, I’ve
said
, sweeties, haven’t I? When he eggzitted after his thing I went back as arranged to the cloakroom and he came in from the outside porch and I took off his robe, wig and makeup and he said he’d go and report to Uncle Fred and I went back to the party.”

“Leaving him there?” Hilary and Mrs. Forrester asked in unison.

“Like I said, for Heaven’s sake. Leaving him there.”

Nobody had paid any attention to Troy. She sat down on the stairs and wondered what her husband would make of the proceedings.

“All right. Yes. Good. All right,” said poor Hilary. “So far so good. Now then. Darling, you therefore came into the hall, here, didn’t you, on your way to the drawing-room?”

“I didn’t do an Uncle Tom’s Cabin, darling, and take to the snow.”

“Of course not. Ha-ha. And — let me see — the people in charge of the children’s supper were here, weren’t they?” Hilary looked appealingly in their direction. “Kitti — Cooke — and all his helpers?“ he wheedled.

“That’s right,” said Cressida. “Busy as bees.” She closed her eyes.

“And I expect,” Hilary said, “some of you remember Miss Tottenham coming into the hall, don’t you?”

Kittiwee said huffily, “Well, sir, I’m sure we
were
very busy round the supper table at the far end of the hall and, personally speaking, I didn’t take notice to anythink but my work. However, sir, I do call the incident to mind because of a remark that was passed.”

“Oh?” Hilary glanced at Cressida who didn’t open her eyes.

“I asked him,” she said, “if his bloody cats were shut up.”

“Yes, I see.”

Mrs. Forrester adjusted her thick-lensed spectacles to look at Cressida.

“The thing is,” Hilary hurried on, “did any of you happen to notice Moult when he came out of the cloakroom there? After Miss Tottenham? Because he must have come out and he ought to have gone up the right-hand flight of the stairs to the Colonel’s room and then returned to help with the children.”

Hilary’s reference to the stairs caused his audience to shift their attention to them and discover Troy. Mrs. Forrester ejaculated: “Has he—?” and Troy said quickly, “No. Not a sign. The Colonel’s quite all right and fast asleep.”

Nobody, it transpired, had seen Moult come out of the cloakroom or go anywhere. Kittiwee again pointed out that the hall was large and dark and they were all very busy. When asked if they hadn’t wondered why Moult didn’t turn up to do his job, Blore replied with unmistakable spitefulness that this didn’t surprise them in the least.

“Why?” Mrs. Forrester barked.

Kittiwee simpered and Blore was silent. One of the women tittered.

Mr. Smith removed his cigar from his mouth. “Was ’e sozzled?” he asked of nobody in particular, and as there was no response added, “What I mean, did ’e take a couple to celebrate ’is triumph?”

“That’s a point,” Cressida conceded. She opened her eyes. “He was in a tizzy about going on for the part. It was pretty silly, really, because after all — no dialogue. Round the tree, business with arms, and off. Still, he was nervous. And when I fixed his whiskers I must say it was through a pretty thick Scotch mist.”