Andrew Martin - Death on a Branch line

Looking over, I saw a small table covered by a white cloth, and over-crowded with bottles and ice buckets. I had the notion that the four people standing around it and waiting for us were all adults, and that the wife and I were children. Evidently the four had all eaten supper, and we had received an invitation of an inferior sort after all, and I knew this would go hard with the wife. I knew also that her nervousness and embarrassment on this account would far exceed in her any anxiety about any murderous doings.

We were not approaching the terrace by the two proper walkways, but had somehow ended up going haphazard over the grass. Having drunk off my claret, I found that I was now making towards the hosts with an already empty glass, which also didn’t seem quite etiquette. The wife, of course, carried no glass, since she was tee-total.

It was Chandler’s wife who was waiting to greet me at the margin of the terrace. Do not on any account say, ‘I see that you do yourselves pretty well here,’ I told myself. Do not say, ‘This is laying on luxury.’

She shook my hand, she might even have curtsied; she said something I didn’t quite catch and then, after a long beat of silence, I heard myself saying, ‘Lovely place you have here.’

Meanwhile Lydia was being greeted by the host, who said, ‘It is lovely to see you again,’ and the two ‘lovelys’ seemed to clash.

From the rear of the terrace, I heard a laugh from the Chief as he spoke to Usher, and it was not quite natural, not quite him. Had Usher got him under the gun? Had he bested him as he had bested me?

And where had the Chief got his bloody dinner suit from?

The hostess, who stood before me, was looking down at the ground. Beneath the folds of her dress, she moved one of her feet, as though testing the bricks beneath. She looked up again, and a ruby necklace rose on the slopes of her white bosom as she took a deep breath. I had the idea that she was at once very distant and very near, and that she was a little squiffed. She then spoke all in a flurry:

‘We had such a friendly talk earlier on at the village with your wife, Mr Stringer. She said she was absolutely just dying to see some Chinese lanterns, and — anything to oblige!’

She turned and smiled with arm outstretched, presenting the lanterns of which there was now one fewer, the scorched one having burnt right out. I looked from it towards the Chief, who had certainly noticed me, but had not yet given me any acknowledgement. Mrs Chandler, spotting the direction of my glance, said, ‘You won’t believe it but those two are talking about camels.’

As the manservant poured more claret for both of us, Mrs Chandler said something about how the two men had been in Africa, so what could you expect? There was practically nothing in Africa but camels. Then the host, Robert Chandler, came over with his arm in Lydia’s.

I looked at Lydia’s white-gloved hand, and there was a glass of champagne there, and the sight was so all-of-a-piece and so elegant that for a moment the shock did not register. As I looked on, she drained off the rest of the glass and shot me a look that clearly said, ‘You put away gallons of alcohol every week, so why shouldn’t I take a glass now and again?’ I understood straightaway that it was the shame of not being invited to the meal that had made her do it, but the sight of the glass so knocked me that I said to the host:

‘By the way, Mr Chandler, where is John Lambert?’

‘John?’ he said. ‘Well, we hope to see him here. But I think he is a little over-strained just at present.’

‘That’s what everyone says,’ I said.

‘Do they?’ said Mr Chandler, and he looked put out. ‘I was rather congratulating myself on my — y’know — insight. He’s not a very forward party exactly, and he’s been conferring with Captain Usher all day, so I expect he’s pretty worn out. Now that sounds as though I’m being rude about Usher when in fact he seems a perfectly pleasant chap who knows a very great deal about camels and horses and dogs and things like that. Tell me, do you know that fellow that runs The Angel? What’s wrong with him?’

It hardly mattered what I said in reply. I was becoming confident that Chandler — who at some stage after the arrival of my fourth glass of claret told me to call him Bobby and his wife Milly — did not really know Usher, and that he was out of the picture as far as any bad business was concerned. As he burbled on in his amiable way, he kept glancing over to Lydia, who was talking to Milly, while I heard the Chief say to Usher, ‘Strange that is, sir… I always took the General for a base wallah,’ at which they both laughed, but especially the Chief.

Of course, that would be how things stood between them. Chief inspector was a higher rank than captain, but Usher was an army captain, and it was the army that signified. The Chief had only been a sergeant major in his service days, so the Chief ‘sirred’ Usher just as I ‘sirred’ the Chief. Only that word sounded wrong on the lips of a man who’d seen as much as my governor.

Another glass of claret was presented to me by the footman, who seemed to have become a special ally of mine. I looked across to the Chief again, and Usher was watching me. Had he been forewarned that I’d been invited? His gaze was not over-friendly, and I was quite sure that if he’d had his way I would be nowhere near the Hall at this moment, but it seemed that he was a species of guest just as I was, and so caught between good manners and whatever business he had in hand.

I drained off my glass at a draught, and said to Bobby Chandler:

‘There was a murder here, of course.’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Good subject for a party conversation!’

I gave a sudden nervous laugh, quite unintended, and Bobby Chandler made to give me a nudge with the back of his hand, saying, ‘Could it be that we share the same sense of humour, Mr Stranger?’

And then he fell to looking at Lydia again.

‘It’s Stringer,’ I said.

‘Yes, my brother-in-law…’ he said. ‘Perfectly blameless existence walking about this place blasting animals to kingdom come, and then made away with by his own son — what do you think of that?’

‘It’s a bad look-out,’ I said.

‘ Damned bad,’ said Bobby Chandler. ‘And with his own thirty-inch barrel, one-hundred-and-fifty-guinea twelve-bore.’

‘It’s a bad look-out,’ I said again, and I thought: I’m canned already.

‘When I got the news,’ said Bobby Chandler, ‘I was absolutely devastated for about — well, not that long if we’re quite honest. I didn’t know my brother-in-law all that well, and he wasn’t really my sort.’

He was looking at Lydia again.

‘It’s a shame about young Hugh of course, in a way, but I hardly knew him either…’

So it was not really such a great shame.

‘Good-looking boy, Hugh,’ he said vaguely. ‘Had a governess absolutely devoted to him. Absolutely devoted. Now governesses are always either terribly pretty or absolutely grim-looking, don’t you think?’

I wondered at the question, since it must be obvious to him that I was not acquainted with many governesses. Was this generosity in him or plain ignorance? Had he expected us not to notice that we hadn’t been invited to the supper, but only the afters? He’d very likely not thought about it either way. His chief goal was avoidance of boredom, and proper form and ‘the done thing’ could go by the board as far as he was concerned.

Well, it was all right by me.

‘… And if you knew anything about my brother-in-law,’ Bobby Chandler was saying, ‘you’ll know which sort young Hugh’s governess was. Can you guess?’

‘Pretty,’ I said.

‘Decidedly,’ said Chandler. ‘I only saw her twice, and even though she was a servant of sorts… Now I’m not quite drunk enough to say what I’m going to say next, so change the subject please, Mr Stranger.’