Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Peer

“But, Charlot, if this pot is so valuable, couldn’t you sell it?”

“I suppose we could, but how? And anyway my cunning tells me that it’s much better to invest it as a sweetner for Gabriel. We’ve got to be diplomatic. Suppose the pot is worth a hundred pounds? My dear, we want two thousand. Why not use the pot as a sprat to catch a mackerel?”

“Yes,” said Roberta dubiously, “but may he not think it looks a bit lavish to be giving away valuable pots?”

“Oh, no,” said Lady Charles with an air of dismissal, “he’ll be delighted. And anyway if he flings it back in poor little Mike’s face, we’ve still got the pot.”

“True,” said Roberta, but she felt that there was a flaw somewhere in Lady Charles’s logic.

“We’ll all be in the drawing-room when he comes,” continued Lady Charles, “and I thought perhaps we might have some charades.”

“What!”

“I know it sounds mad, Robin, but you see he knows we’re rather mad and it’s no good pretending we’re not. And we’re all good at charades, you can’t deny it.”

Roberta remembered the charades in New Zealand, particularly one that presented the Garden of Eden. Lord Charles, with his glass in his eye, and an umbrella over his head to suggest the heat of the day, had enacted Adam. Henry was the serpent and the twins angels. Frid had entered into the spirit of the part of Eve and had worn almost nothing but a brassiere and a brown-paper fig-leaf. Lady Charles had found one of the false beards that the Lampreys could always be depended upon to produce and had made a particularly irritable deity. Patch had been the apple tree.

“Does he like charades?” asked Roberta.

“I don’t suppose he ever sees any, which is all to the good. We’ll make him feel gay. That’s poor old Gabriel’s trouble. He’s never gay enough.”

There was a tap at the door and Henry looked in.

“I thought you might like a good laugh,” said Henry. “The bum has come up the back stairs and caught poor old Daddy. He’s sitting in the kitchen with Baskett and the maids.”

“Oh no !” said his mother.

“His name is Mr. Gremball,” said Henry. iii

During lunch Lady Charles developed her theory of the way in which Lord Wutherwood — and Rune — was to be received and entertained. The family, with the exception of Henry, entered warmly into the discussion. Henry seemed to be more than usually vague and rather dispirited. Roberta, to her discomfiture, repeatedly caught his eye. Henry stared at her with an expression which she was unable to interpret until it occurred to her that he looked not at but through her. Roberta became less self-conscious and listened more attentively to the rest of the family. With every turn of their preposterous conversation her four years of separation from them seemed to diminish and Roberta felt herself slip, as of old, into an attitude of mind that half accepted the mad logic of their scheming. They discussed the suitability of a charade — Lady Charles and her children with passionate enthusiasm, Lord Charles with an air of critical detachment. Roberta wondered what Lord Charles really felt about the crisis and whether she merely imagined that he wore a faintly troubled air. His face was at no time an expressive one. It was a pale oval face. Shortsighted eyes that looked dimly friendly, a colourless moustache and an oddly youthful mouth added nothing to its distinction, and yet it had distinction of a gentle kind. His voice was pitched rather high and he had a trick of letting his sentences die away while he opened his eyes widely and stroked the top of his head. Roberta realized that though she liked him very much she had not the smallest inkling as to what sort of thoughts went on in his mind. He was an exceedingly remote individual.

“Well anyway,” Frid was saying, “we can but try. Let’s fill him up with sherry and do a charade. How about Lady Godiva? Henry the palfrey, Daddy the horrid husband, one of the twins Peeping Tom, and the rest of you the nice-minded populace.”

“If you think I’m going to curvet round the drawing-room with you sitting on my back in the rude nude—” Henry began.

“Your hair’s not long enough, Frid,” said Patch.

“I didn’t say I’d be Lady Godiva.”

“Well, you can hardly expect Mummy to undress,” said Colin, “and anyway you meant yourself.”

“Don’t be an ass, darling,” said Lady Charles, “of course we can’t do Lady Godiva. Uncle G. would be horrified.”

“He might mistake it for a Witches’ Sabbath,” said Henry, “and think we were making fun of Aunt V.”

“If Frid rode on you, I expect he would,” said Patch.

“Why?” asked Mike. “What do witches ride on, Daddy?”

Lord Charles gave his high-pitched laugh. Henry stared thoughtfully at Patch.

“If that wasn’t rude,” he said, “it would be almost funny.”

“Well, why not do a Witches’ Sabbath?” asked Stephen, “Uncle G. hates Aunt V. being a witch. I daresay it would be a great success. It would show we were on his side. We needn’t make it too obvious, you know. It would be a word charade. Ipswich for instance.”

“How would you do Ips?” asked Colin.

“Patch could waggle hers,” said Henry.

“You are beastly , Henry,” stormed Patch. “It’s foul of you to say I’m fat. Mummy!”

“Never mind, darling, it’s only puppy-fat. I think you’re just right.”

“We could do Dulwich,” said Stephen. “The first syllable could be a week-end at Deepacres. Everybody yawning.”

“That would be really rude,” said his mother seriously.

“It wouldn’t be far wrong,” said Lord Charles.

“I know, Charlie, but it would never do. Don’t let’s get all wild and silly about it. Let’s just think sensibly of a good funny charade. Not too vulgar and not insulting.”

There followed a long silence broken by Frid.

“I know,” Frid cried, “we’ll just be ourselves with bums in the house. It could be a breakfast scene with Baskett coming in to say: ‘A person to see you, m’lord.’ You wouldn’t mind, would you, Baskett?”

With that smile demanded by the infinite courtesy of service, Baskett offered Frid cheese. Roberta wondered suddenly if Baskett thought the Lampreys as funny as she did. Frid hurried on with her plan.

“It really would be a good idea, Mummy. You see, Baskett could bring in the bum, and we could all plead with him and Daddy could say all the things he really wants Uncle G. to hear. Robin could do the bum, she’d look heaven in a bowler and a muffler. It would seem sort of gay and gallant at the same time.”

“What would be the word?” asked Patch.

“Bumptious?”

“The second syllable’s impossible,” Colin objected.

“Bumboat?”

“Too obvious.”

“Well, bumpkin. The second syllable could be about relations. We could actually have Uncle G. in it. Robin could be Uncle G. His coat and hat and umbrella will be in the hall ready to hand. We’d all plead with her and say: ‘Your own kith and kin , Gabriel, dear fellow, your own kith and kin.’ ”

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said Stephen, “but you’ve forgotten the ‘p.’”

“It could be silent as in—”

“That will do, Frid,” said Lord Charles.

On the morning after her arrival Roberta woke to see a ray of thin London sunshine slanting across the counterpane. A maid in a print dress had drawn the curtains and put a tray on the bedside table. Dream and reality mixed themselves in Roberta’s thoughts. As she grew wide awake she began to count over the wonderful events of the night that was past. In the hour before dawn she had been driven through London. She had seen jets from hose-pipes splayed fanwise over deserted streets, she had heard the jingle of milk-carts and seen the strange silhouette made by roofs and chimney pots against a thinning sky. She had heard Big Ben tell four of a spring morning and the clocks of Chelsea answer him. Before that she had danced in a room so full of shadows, abrupt lights, relentless music, and people, that the memory was as confused as a dream. She had danced with Colin and Stephen and Henry. Colin had played the fool, pretended he was a Russian, and spoken broken English. Stephen with his quick stutter had talked incessantly and complimented Roberta on her dancing. She had danced most often with Henry who was more silent than the twins. He said so little that Roberta in a sudden panic had wondered if he merely danced with her out of a sense of hospitality and regretted the absence of the person called Mary. In those strange surroundings Henry had become remote, a sophisticated grandee with a white waistcoat, and a gardenia in his coat. Yet, when she danced with him, behind all her bewilderment Roberta had been aware of a deep satisfaction. Now, lying still in her bed, she called back the events of the night so potently that though her eyes were still open she had no thought for the sunlight on her counterpane but anxiously examined the picture of herself and Henry. There they were, moving together among a shadowy company of dancers. He did not wait to see if Stephen or Colin would ask her to dance, but himself asked her quickly and danced on until long after the others had gone back to their table. There was a sort of protective decisiveness in his manner that pleased and embarrassed Roberta. Perhaps after all, he was only worried about the financial crisis. “Heaven knows,” thought Roberta, “it’s enough to worry anybody but a Lamprey into a thousand fits.” She realized that the crisis lay like a nasty taste behind the savor of her own enjoyment. It was not discussed during that dazzling evening until they got home. Creeping into the flat in the half light, they found Nanny’s thermos of Ovaltine and sat drinking it round the heater in Roberta’s room. Henry laughed unexpectedly and said: “Well, chaps, we may not be here much longer.” Frid, very elegant and pale, struck a tragic attitude and said: “The last night in the old home. Pause for sobs.” There was a brief silence broken by Stephen.