Tied Up in Tinsel (11 page)

“There y’are,” said Mr. Smith.

“Aunt Bed — does Moult sometimes —?”

“Occasionally,” said Mrs. Forrester.

“I think he had it on him,” Cressida said. “That’s only my idea, mind. But he sort of patted himself — you know?”

Hilary said, “He was already wearing the robe when you went in to make him up, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. He put it on upstairs, he said, for Uncle Fred to see.”

“Which he didn’t,” Troy said. “He’d gone to sleep.”

“Moult didn’t say anything about that. Though, mind you,” Cressida added, “I was only with him for a matter of a minute. There was nothing to fixing his beard: a couple of spots of spirit gum and Bob was your uncle. But I did notice he was all uptight. He was in no end of a taking-on. Shaking like a leaf, he was.”

“Vincent!” Hilary suddenly exclaimed, and Vincent gave a perceptible start. “Why didn’t I think of you! You saw Moult, outside, when he left the drawing-room, didn’t you? After his performance?”

Vincent, almost indistinguishably, acknowledged that he did.

“Well — what about it? Did he say anything or — or — look anything — or do anything? Come
on
, Vincent?”

But no. It appeared that Vincent had not even noticed it was Moult. His manner suggested that he and Moult were not on such terms that the latter would have divulged his secret. He had emerged from his triumph into the icy cold, hunched his shoulders against the wind, and bolted from the courtyard into the porch. Vincent saw him enter the little cloakroom.

“Which gets us nowhere,” Mrs. Forrester said with a kind of stony triumph.

“I don’t know why there’s all the carry-on, ’Illy,” said Mr. Smith. “Alf Moult’s sleeping it orf.”

“Where?” Mrs. Forrester demanded.

“Where, where, where! Anywhere. You don’t tell me there’s not plenty of lay-bys for a spot of kip where nobody’s thought of looking! ’Ow about the chapel?”

“My dear Uncle Bert — surely —”

“Or all them old stables and what-’ave-you at the back. Come orf it!”

“Have you —?” Hilary asked his staff.

“I looked in the chapel,” Mrs. Forrester announced.

“Has anybody looked — well — outside. The laundries and so on?”

It appeared not. Vincent was dispatched to do this. “If ’e’s there,” Troy heard him mutter “ ’e’ll ’ave froze.”

“What about the top story? The attics?” Mr. Smith asked.

“No, sir. We’ve looked,” said Blore, addressing himself exclusively to Hilary. It struck Troy that the staff despised Mr. Smith for the same reason that they detested Moult.

A silence followed: mulish on the part of the staff, baffled on the part of the houseparty, exhausted on all counts. Hilary finally dismissed the staff. He kept up his grand seignorial role by thanking his five murderers, congratulating them upon their management of the party and hoping, he said, that their association would continue as happily throughout the coming year. Those of the temporary helpers who live in the district he excused from further duties.

The houseparty then retired to the boudoir, it being, Hilary said, the only habitable room in the house.

Here, after a considerable amount of desultory speculation and argument, everybody but Troy, who found she detested the very sight of alcohol, had a nightcap. Hilary mixed two rum toddies and Mrs. Forrester said she would take them up to her room. “If your uncle’s awake,” she said. “He’ll want one. II he isn’t—”

“You’ll polish them both off yourself, Auntie?”

“And why not?” she said. “Good-night, Mrs. Alleyn. I am very much obliged to you. Good-night, Hilary. Good-night, Smith.” She looked fixedly at Cressida. “Good-night,” she said.

“What have
I
done?” Cressida demanded when Mrs. Forrester had gone. “Honestly, darling, your relations!”

“Darling, you
know
Auntie Bed, none better. One can only laugh.”

“Heh, heh, heh. Anyone’d think I’d made Moult tight and then hidden him in the boot cupboard.” Cressida stopped short and raised a finger. “
A propos
,” she said. “Has anybody looked in the cupboards?”

“Now, my darling child, why on earth should he be in a cupboard? You talk,” said Hilary, “as if he were a Body,” and then looked extremely perturbed.

“If you ask my opinion which you haven’t,” said Mr. Smith, “I think you’re all getting yourselves in a muck sweat about nothing. Don’t you lose any sleep over Alf Moult. He knows how to look after ’imself, none better. And since it’s my practice to act as I speak I’ll wish you good-night. Very nice show, ’Illy, and none the worse for being a bit of a mock-up. Wouldn’t of done for the pipe-and-tabor lot, would it? Bells, Druids, Holy Families and angels! What a combination! Oh dear! Still, the kids appreciated it so we don’t care, do we? Well. Bye, bye, all.”

When he had gone Hilary said to Troy, “You see what I mean about Uncle Bert? In his way he’s a purist.”

“Yes, I do see.”

“I think he’s fantastic,” said Cressida. “You know? There’s something basic. The grass-roots thing. You
believe
in him. Like he might be out of Genêt.”

“My darling girl, what dreadful nonsense you do talk! Have you so much as
read
Genêt?”

“Hilly! For Heaven’s sake — he’s where O-E
begins
.”

Hilary said with unusual acerbity, “And I’m afraid he’s where I leave off.”

“Of course I’ve known all along you’ll never get the message.”

Troy thought, “This is uncomfortable. They’re going to have a row,” and was about to leave them to it when Cressida suddenly laughed and wound her arms round Hilary’s neck. He became very still. She drew his head down and whispered. They both laughed. Their embrace became so explicit that Troy thought on the whole she had better evaporate and proceeded to do so.

At the door she half turned, wondering if she should throw out a jolly good-night. Hilary, without releasirig Cressida, lifted his face and gave Troy not so much a smile as the feral grimace of an antique Hylaeus. When she had shut the door behind her she thought: that was the sort of thing one should never see.

On her way through the hall she found a great clearance had been made and could hear voices in the drawing-room. Well, she thought, Hilary certainly has it both ways. He gets all the fun of setting up his party and none of the tedious aftermath. That’s done for him by his murderers.

She reached her room, with its well-tended fire, turned-down bed and impeccably laid-out dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. She supposed Nigel had found time to perform these duties, and found this a disagreeable reflection.

She hung her dress in the wardrobe and could just catch the drone of the Forresters’ voices joined, it seemed, in no very urgent conversation. Troy was wide awake and restless. Too much had happened and happened inconclusively over the last few days. The anonymous messages, which, with astonishment, she realized she had almost forgotten. The booby-trap, Cressida’s report of the row in the staff common-room. Uncle Flea’s turns. Moult as Druid. The disappearance of Moult. Should these elements, wondered Troy, who had been rereading her Forster, connect? What would Rory think? He was fond of quoting Forster. “Only connect. Only connect.” What would he make of all this? And now, in a flash, Troy was perfectly certain that he would think these were serious matters.

As sometimes happens in happy marriages, Troy and her husband, when parted, often found that before one of them wrote or cabled or telephoned, the other was visited by an intensified awareness, a kind of expectation. She had this feeling very vividly now and was glad of it. Perhaps in the morning there would be news.

She heard midnight strike and a moment later Cressida, humming the “Bells of St. Clement’s,” passed the door on her way to her room at the south end of the corridor.

Troy yawned. The bedroom was overheated and at last she was sleepy. She went to her window, slipped through the curtains without drawing them, and opened it at the top. The north wind had risen and the rumour of its progress was abroad in the night. Flights of cloud were blown across the heavens. The moon was high now, casting a jetty shadow from the house across the snow. It was not a deserted landscape, for round the corner of the east wing came Vincent and his wheelbarrow and in the barrow the dead body of the Christmas tree denuded of its glory. He plodded on until he was beneath the Forresters’ windows and then turned into the shadow and was swallowed. She heard a swish and tinkle as he tipped his load into the debris of the ruined conservatory.

Shivering and immoderately tired, she went to bed and to sleep.

Troy woke next morning at the sound of Nigel’s discreet attentions to her fire. He had placed her early tea tray by her bed.

She couldn’t make up her mind, at once, to speak to him, but when he opened her window curtains and let in the reflected pallor of snow she wished him good morning.

He paused, blinking his white eyelashes, and returned the greeting.

“Is it still snowing?” she asked.

“Off and on, madam. There was sleet in the night but it changed to snow, later.”

“Has Moult appeared?”

“I believe not, madam.”

“How very odd, isn’t it?”

“Yes, madam. Will that be all, madam?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Thank you, madam.”

But it’s all phony, Troy thought. He turns it on. He didn’t talk like that when he made rocking-horses and wax effigies. Before he reached the door she said, “I think you made a wonderful job of that catafalque.”

He stopped. “Ta,” he said.

“I don’t know how you managed to get such precision and detail with a medium like snow.”

“It was froze.”

“Even so. Have you ever sculpted? In stone?”

“It was all working from moulds like. But I always had a fancy to carve.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He said, “Ta,” again. He looked directly at her and went out.

Troy bathed and dressed and took her usual look at the landscape. Everywhere except in areas close to the house, a coverlet of snow. Not a footprint to be seen. Over on the far left the canvas-covered bulldozers and their works were mantled. Every tree was a Christmas tree. Somebody had re-erected the scarecrow, or perhaps with a change in the wind it had righted itself. It looked, if anything, more human than before. Quite a number of birds had settled on it.

Troy found Hilary and Mr. Smith at breakfast. Hilary lost no time in introducing the Moult theme.

“No Moult! It really is beyond a joke, now,” he said. “Even Uncle Bert agrees, don’t you, Uncle Bert?”

“I give you in, it’s a rum go,” he conceded. “Under existing circs, it’s rather more than that. It’s upsetting.”

“What do you mean by ‘existing circs’?”

“Ask yourself.”

“I asked you.”

Mervyn came in with a fresh supply of toast.

“
Pas devant les domestiques
,” quoted Mr. Smith.

Mervyn withdrew. “Why not before them?” Hilary asked crossly.

“Use your loaf, boy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Uncle Bert.”

“No? Ah: Fancy.”

“Oh,
blast
everything!” said Hilary. He turned to Troy. “He really
isn’t
on the premises,” he said. “Not in the house or the outbuildings. If he wandered into the grounds somewhere, he didn’t go off the drive or swept paths because there aren’t any unaccountable footprints in the snow.”

“Could he have got into the back of one of the cars and gone to sleep and been driven away unnoticed?”

“He’d have woken up and declared himself by now, surely?”

“It’s an idea, though,” said Mr. Smith. “What say he got into the boot of the station wagon from the Vale and come to behind bars? That’d be a turn-up for the books, wouldn’t it?”

“Excessively droll,” said Hilary sourly. “Well!” he said, throwing up his hands, “what’s the next step? I don’t know! The Fleas are becoming difficult, I can tell you that much. I looked in on them and found Aunt Bed trying to valet Uncle Flea and getting it all wrong. Aunt Bed’s in a rage because she can’t put her jewelry away.”

“Why can’t she?”

“It seems she keeps it in their locked tin box with all their securities under the bed in the dressing-room.”

“I know,” said Troy. “I saw it.”

“Well, Moult’s got the key.”

“They’re potty,” said Mr. Smith definitively. “What I mean, potty. What I mean, look at it! Carts her stuff round, and it’s good stuff, mind, some of it’s very nice stuff. Carts it round in a flipping tin box and gives the key to a bloody disappearing act. No, what I mean, I arstyou!”

“All right, Uncle Bert. All right. We all know the Fleas go their own way. That’s beside the point. What we have to decide —”

The door was flung open and Mrs. Forrester entered in a temper. She presented a strange front to the breakfast table. She was attired in her usual morning apparel: a Harris tweed skirt, a blouse and three cardigans, the uppermost being puce in colour. Stuck about this ensemble at eccentric angles were any number of brooches. Round her neck hung the elaborate Victorian necklace which had been the
pièce de résistance
of her last night’s toilet. She wore many rings and several bracelets. A watch, suspended from a diamond and emerald bow, was pinned to her breast. She twinkled and glittered like — the comparison was inevitable — a Christmas tree.

“Look at me,” she unnecessarily demanded.

“Aunt B,” Hilary said, “we do. With astonishment.”

“As well you might. Under the circumstances, Hilary, I feel obliged to keep my Lares and Penates about me.”

“I would hardly describe —”

“Very well. They are not kitchen utensils. That I grant you. The distinction, however, is immaterial.”

“You didn’t sport all that hardware last night, Mrs. F,” Mr. Smith suggested.

“I did not. I had it brought out and I made my choice. The rejected pieces should have been returned to their place. By Moult. They were not and I prefer under the circumstances to keep them about me. That, however is not the matter at issue. Hilary!”

“Aunt Bed?”

“An attempt has been made upon our strongbox.”

“Oh my God! What do you mean?”

“There is evidence. An instrument — possibly a poker — has been introduced in an unsuccessful attempt upon the padlock.”

“It needed only this,” said Hilary and took his head between his hands.

“I am keeping it from your uncle: it would fuss him. What do you propose to do?”

“I? What can I do? Why,” asked Hilary wildly, “do you keep it under the dressing-room bed?”

“Because it won’t go under our bed, which is ridiculously low.”

“What’s the story, then?” Mr. Smith asked. “Did Alf Moult try to rob the till and run away in a fright when he foozled the job?”

“With the key in his pocket?” Mrs. Forrester snapped. “You’re not very bright this morning, Smith.”

“It was a joke.”

“Indeed.”

Blore came in. “A telephone call, sir, for Mrs. Alleyn,” he said.

“
Me
? Is it from London?”

“Yes, madam. Mr. Alleyn, madam.”

“Oh how lovely!” Troy shouted before she could stop herself. She apologized and made a bolt for the telephone.

“— so we wound the whole thing up at ninety in the shade and here I am. A Happy Christmas, darling. When shall I see you?”

“Soon. Soon. The portrait’s finished. I think. I’m not sure.”

“When in doubt, stop. Shouldn’t you?”

“I daresay. I want to. But there’s just one thing —”

“Troy: is anything the matter?”

“In a way. No — not with me. Here.”

“You’ve turned cagey. Don’t you want to talk?”

“Might be better not.”

“I see. Well — when?”

“I — Rory, hold on will you? Hold on.”

“I’m holding.”

It was Hilary. He had come in unnoticed and now made deprecatory gestures and rather silly little faces at Troy. “Please!” he said. “May I? Do forgive me, but may I?”

“Of course.”

“It’s just occurred to me. So dismal for Alleyn to be in an empty house in London at Christmas. So
please
, suggest he comes to us. I know you want to fly on wings of song, but you did say you might need one more sitting, and anyway I should be so delighted to meet him. He might even advise about Moult or would that be anti-protocol? But — please —?”

“I think perhaps —”

“No, you don’t. You can’t. You mustn’t ‘think perhaps.’ Ask him. Go on, do.”

Troy gave her husband the message.

“Do you,” he said, speaking close to the receiver, “want this? Or would you rather come home? There’s something up, isn’t there? Put on a carefree voice, love, and tell me. Would you like me to come? I can. I’m free at the moment.”

“Can you? Are you?”

“Then, shall I?”

“I really don’t know,” Troy said and laughed, as she trusted, gaily. “Yes. I think so.”

“When would you leave if I didn’t come?”

“Well — don’t quite know,” she said and hoped she sounded playful and cooperative.

“What the hell,” her husband asked, “is all this? Well, never mind. You can’t say, obviously.”

Hilary was making modest little gestures. He pointed to himself and mouthed, “May I?”

“Hilary,” said Troy, “would like to have a word.”

“Turn him on,” said Alleyn. “Or have you, by any chance, already done so?”

“Here he is,” Troy said severely. “Rory: this is Hilary Bill-Tasman.”

She handed over the receiver and listened to Hilary. His manner was masterly: not too overtly insistent, not too effusive, but of such a nature that it made a refusal extremely difficult. I suppose, Troy thought, these are the techniques he brings to bear on his rich, complicated business. She imagined her husband’s lifted eyebrow. Presently Hilary said: “And you
are
free, aren’t you? So why not? The portrait, if nothing else, will be your reward: it’s quite superb. You will? I couldn’t be more delighted. Now: about trains — there’s just time —”

When that was settled he turned, beamingly, to Troy and held out the receiver. “Congratulate me!” cried Hilary and, with that characteristic gesture of his, left the room, gaily wagging his hand above his head.

Troy said, “It’s me again.”

“Good.”

“I’ll come to the station.”

“Too kind.”

“So nice to see you again!”

“Always pleasant to pick up the threads.”

“Good-morning.”

“Good-morning.”

When Hilary announced that Vincent would put on his chauffeur’s uniform and take the small car to the main line station, Troy suggested that she herself could do so. This clearly suited him very well. She gathered that some sort of exploratory work was to be carried out in the grounds. (“Though really,” Hilary said, “one holds out little hope of it”) and that Vincent’s presence would be helpful.

Soon after luncheon Troy got ready for the road. She heard a commotion under her window and looked out.

Vincent and three other men were floundering about in a halfhearted way among broken glass and the dense thicket that invested the site of the old conservatory. They poked and thrust with forks and spades. “But that’s ridiculous,” thought Troy.

She found Hilary downstairs waiting to see her off.

He stared at her. “You look,” he said, “as if somebody had given you a wonderful present. Or made love to you. Or something.”

“And that’s exactly how I feel,” she said.

He was silent for so long and stared so hard that she was obliged to say: “Is anything more the matter?”

“I suppose not,” he said slowly. “I hope not. I was just wondering. However! Watch out for icy patches, won’t you? You can’t miss the turnings.
Bon voyage
.”

He watched her start up her engine, turned on his heel, and went quickly into the house.

In her walks Troy had always taken paths that led up to the moors: “The Land Beyond the Scarecrow,” she had called it to herself as if it belonged to a children’s story. Now she drove down the long drive that was to become a grand avenue. The bulldozer men were not at work over Christmas. Their half-formed hillock, and the bed for the lake that would reflect it, were covered with snow — the tractors looked ominous and dark under their tarpaulins. Further away stood a copse of bare trees that was evidently a feature of the original estate and beyond this, fields stretching downhill, away from the moors and towards a milder and more humanized landscape. At the end of the drive she crossed a bridge over a rapid brook that Hilary had told her would be developed, further upstream, into water gardens.

A drive of some twelve miles brought her to her destination. The late afternoon sun shone bravely, there was an air of normality and self-containment about the small country town of Downlow. Troy drove along the main street to the station, parked her car, and went through the office to the platform. Here, in the familiar atmosphere of paste, disinfectant and travel posters, Halberds seemed absurd and faintly distasteful.

She was early and walked up and down the platform, partly to keep warm and partly to work off her overstimulated sense of anticipation. Strange notions came into her head. As, for instance, would Cressida in — say — ten years’ time, feel more or less like this if she had been absent from Hilary for three weeks? Was Cressida much in love with Hilary? Did she passionately want to be mistress of Halberds? Judging by those representatives of county families who had rather uneasily attended the party, Cressida was unlikely to find a kindred spirit among them. Perhaps she and Hilary would spend most of their time in their S.W.1 flat, which Troy supposed to be on a pretty lavish scale. Would they take some of their murderers to look after them when they came up to London? Troy found that she felt uneasy about Cressida and obscurely sorry for her.

With a loud clank the signal arm jerked up. A porter and one or two other persons strolled onto the platform, and from down the line came the banshee whistle of the London train.

“Mind? Of course I don’t mind,” Alleyn said. “I thought I should be hanging about the flat waiting for you to come home! Instead of which, here we are, bold as brass, driving somebody else’s car through a Christmas tree landscape and suiting each other down to the ground. What’s wrong with that?”

“I’ve no complaints.”

“In that case you must now tell me what’s up in the Bill-Tasman outfit. You sounded greatly put out this morning.”

“Yes, well… all right. Hold on to your hat and fetch up all your willing suspension of unbelief. You’ll need it.”

“I’ve heard of Bill-Tasman’s experiment with villains for flunkies. Your letter seemed to suggest that it works.”

“That was early days. That was a week ago. I didn’t write again because there wasn’t time. Now, listen.”

“ ‘
List, list, O list
.’ ”