Colin Dexter - The Secret of Annexe 3

This whole scene changes as the visitor walks further northwards past Park Town, for soon he finds houses built of a cheerful orange-red brick that gives an immediate impression of warmth and good fellowship after the slightly forbidding facades of the Venetian wedge. Now the roofs are of red tile, and the paintwork around the stone-plinthed windows of an almost uniform white. The architects, some fifteen years older now, and no longer haunted by the ghost of Ruskin, drew the tops of their windows, sensibly and simply, in a straight horizontal. And thus it is that the housing for about half a mile or so north of St. Giles' exhibits the influences of its times — times in which the first batches of College Fellows left the cloisters and the quads to marry and multiply, and to employ cohorts of maids and under-maids and tweeny maids in the spacious suburban properties that slowly spread northward along the Banbury and Woodstock Roads in the last decades of the nineteenth century — their annual progress leaving its record no less surely than the annular tracings of a sawn-through tree of mighty girth.

Betwixt the two rings sketched briefly above, and partaking something of each, stands the Haworth Hotel. It will not be necessary to describe this building — or, rather, these buildings — in any great detail at this point, but a few things should be mentioned immediately. When (ten years since) the house had been put on the market, the successful purchaser had been one John Binyon, an erstwhile factory-hand from Leeds who had one day invested a £1 Treble Chance stake on the Pools, and who (to the incredulity of the rest of the nation) had thought fit to presume, in an early round of the FA Cup, that the current leaders of the First Division would be unable to defeat a lowly bunch t)f non-league part-time no-hopers from the Potteries — Binyon's reward for such effrontery being a jackpot prize of £450,000 from Littlewoods. The large detached residence (first named the Three Swans Guest House and then the Haworth Hotel) had been his initial purchase — a building that paid tribute both to the staid Venetian planner of the 1880s and to his gayer rosy-fingered colleague of the 1890s. Yellow-bricked, red-roofed, the tops of doors and windows now compromised to gentle curves, the house openly proclaimed its divided loyalties in a quietly genteel manner, standing back from the road some ten yards or so with a slightly apologetic air, as if awaiting with only partial confidence the advent of social acceptability. After a few disappointing months, trade began to pick up for Binyon, and then to prosper most satisfactorily; after two years of a glorified B & B provision, the establishment was promoted to the hotel league, boasting now a fully licensed restaurant, colour-TV'd and showered or bathroomed accommodation, and a small exercise room for fitness fanatics; and four years after this, the proprietor had been able to stand under his own front porch and to look up with pride at the yellow sign which proclaimed that the AA had deemed it appropriate to award the Haworth Hotel one of its stars. Thereafter such was mine host's continued success that he was soon deciding to expand his operations — in two separate directions. First, he was able to purchase the premises immediately adjacent on the south side, in order to provide (in due course and after considerable renovation) a readily accessible annexe for the increasingly large number of tourists during the spring and summer seasons. Second, he began to implement his growing conviction that much of the comparatively slack period (especially weekends and holidays) from October to March could be revitalized by a series of tastefully organized special-rate functions. And it was for this reason that a half-page advertisement for the Haworth Hotel appeared (now for the third year running) in the 'Winter Breaks with Christmas and New Year Bonanzas' brochures which were to be seen on the racks of many a travel agent in the autumn of the year in which our story begins. And in order that the reader may get the flavour of the special features which attracted those men and women we are to meet in the following pages we reproduce below the prospectus in which the hotel was willing to offer 'at prices decidedly too difficult to resist' for a three-day break over the New Year.

TUESDAY

NEW YEAR'S EVE

12.30 a.m.Sherry reception! John and Catherine Binyon extend a happy welcome to as many of their guests as can make this early get-together.

1.00 p.m.Buffet lunch: a good time for more introductions — or reunions.

The afternoon will give you the opportunity for strolling down — only ten minutes' walk to Carfax! — into the centre of our beautiful University City. For those who prefer a little lively competition to keep them busy and amused, tournaments are arranged for anyone fancying his (her!) skills at darts, snooker, table-tennis, Scrabble, and video games. Prizes!

5.00 p.m.Tea and biscuits: nothing — but nothing! — else will be available. Please keep a keen edge on your appetite for. .

7.30 p.m.OUR GRAND FANCY DRESS DINNER PARTY.

It will be huge fun if everyone — yes, everyone! — comes to the dinner in fancy dress. But please don't think that we shall be any less liberal with the pre-prandial cocktails if you can't. This year's theme is 'The Mystery of the East', and for those who prefer to improvise their costumes our own Rag Bag will be available in the games room throughout the afternoon.

10.00 a.m.Fancy Dress Judging: Prizes!! — continuing with live Cabaret and Dancing to keep you in wonderful spirits until. .

Midnight to 1.00 a.m.Champagne! Auld Lang Syne! Bed!!!

WEDNESDAY

NEW YEAR'S DAY

8.30–10.30 a.m.Continental Breakfast (quietly please, for the 10.30 a.m. benefit of any of us — all of us! — with a mild hangover).

10.45 a.m.CAR TREASURE-HUNT, with clues scattered round a care-free, car-free (as we hope) Oxford. There are plenty of simple instructions, so you'll never get lost. Be adventurous! And get out for a breath of fresh air! (Approximately one and a half hours to complete.) Prizes!!

1.00 p.m.English Roast Beef Luncheon.

2.00 p.m.TOURNAMENTS once more for those who have the stamina; and the chance of an afternoon nap for those who haven't.

4.30 p.m.Devonshire Cream Tea.

6.30 p.m.Your pantomime coach awaits to take you to Aladdin at the Apollo Theatre.

There will be a full buffet awaiting you on your return, and you can dance away the rest of the evening at the DISCO (live music from Paper Lemon) until the energy (though not the bar!) runs out.

THURSDAY

9.00 a.m.Full English Breakfast — available until 10.30 a.m. The last chance to say your farewells to your old friends and your new ones, and to promise to repeat the whole enjoyable process again next year!

Of course (it is agreed) such a prospectus would not automatically appeal to every sort and condition of humankind. Indeed, the idea of spending New Year's Eve being semi-forcibly cajoled into participating in a darts match, or dressing up as one of the Samurai, or even of being expected de rigueur to wallow in the company of their fellow men, would drive some solid citizens into a state of semi-panic. And yet, for the past two years, many a couple had been pleasingly surprised to discover how much, after the gentlest nudge of persuasion, they had enjoyed the group activities that the Binyons so brashly presented. Several couples were now repeating the visit for a second time; and one couple for a third — although it is only fair to add that neither member of this unattractive duo would ever have dreamed of donning a single item of fancy dress, delighting themselves only, as they had done, in witnessing what they saw as the rather juvenile imbecilities of their fellow guests. For the simple truth was that almost all the guests required surprisingly little, if any, persuasion to dress up for the New Year's Eve party — not a few of them with brilliant, if bizarre effect. And such (as we shall see) was to be the case this year, with several of the guests so subtly disguised, so cleverly bedecked in alien clothing, that even long-standing acquaintances would have recognized them only with the greatest difficulty.