Ти Кинси - Christmas at The Grange - A Lady Hardcastle Mystery (Kindle Single)

‘He’ll come down when he can, m’dear,’ said Lady Farley-Stroud. ‘He wouldn’t let his family down at Christmas.’

Hattie had the resigned look of someone who had been ‘let down’ altogether too many times before to believe this hearty reassurance, but she dutifully nodded her agreement nonetheless.

Hattie and her brood were merely the advance guard. Over the next quarter of an hour, the rest of the houseguests arrived – along with the Reverend and Mrs Bland, and Dr Fitzsimmons, from the village.

I tried to keep track of the family members, but without a notebook and pencil I never really stood a chance. Lady Farley-Stroud’s sister, Hilda, made an impression, certainly. She seemed to be younger by a few years, but theirs was a strong family resemblance both in appearance and manner. I remembered being pleasantly surprised by some of the more outrageous tales from Lady Farley-Stroud’s youth, and it seemed that Hilda was no less prone to ribaldry. They shared a taste in men, too. Her husband, Baden Beaufort, was clearly cast from the same mould as Sir Hector – affable, cheerful and compliant. He was also partial to a drink. Or two.

Sir Hector’s sister, by contrast, struck me as being a good deal less fun to be around. Mrs Joyce Adaway had been widowed in 1898. Like the late Queen Victoria, she had dressed in mourning and had steadfastly refused to wear any colour other than black ever since. She was a few years older than Sir Hector, with old-fashioned attitudes to match. She had been on the verge of shaking my hand until Lady Farley-Stroud had said that I was Lady Hardcastle’s lady’s maid. Where others might have shaken my hand anyway and privately wondered what the world was coming to, she snatched back her hand and turned away. She didn’t even trouble to invent a distraction, she simply turned and left.

This amused Sir Hector no end. ‘Take no notice, m’dear,’ he said. ‘Always been a snob, our Joycie. Hope y’don’t mind too much, but you were the first person to be added to the guest list when she accepted the invitation to come down. We knew you’d get up her nose.’ He laughed again. ‘Scored a bullseye there, what? Can’t wait to see her face when you sit down with us at lunch tomorrow.’

He seemed so gleeful at casting me as the cat to be set among her pigeons that I found it hard to take offence.

Mrs Adaway’s eldest daughter, Alberta, and her husband, Sir Edward Chambers, made little immediate impression. I gathered from conversation that he was a KC, and he seemed charming enough, but in most respects he was like every other barrister I’ve ever met and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pick him out from a crowd in future. Their children, Letitia and Humphrey, had also been allowed to join the grown-ups, but made a beeline for their cousins as soon as they were able, so I didn’t get a chance to find out what they were like. The four children formed a suspiciously conspiratorial huddle in the corner of the library, and I was glad I wasn’t going to be around long enough to suffer the results of their machinations.

We were given reasons why assorted other brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces were unable to join the rest of the family in Gloucestershire, but I confess I can no longer recall any of the details. There were one or two ‘other family engagements’, at least one more ‘urgently required at work’ and, my definite favourite: ‘To tell the truth, m’dear, I can’t stand the man – gives me the absolute pip – so we never invite him.’

The final guest to blow exuberantly into the library, cigar in hand, was Julius Goodheart. He was introduced as a ‘terribly good pal’ of Sir Edward, and I could tell at once that he was going to be the one to enliven proceedings. He was moderately tall, with the build of a sportsman and the confident air of someone who has never met anyone who didn’t immediately like him. Even in the company of complete strangers – most of whom had known each other all their lives – his easy bonhomie made him the centre of whichever group he happened to be in.

It was shaping up to be a rather fun evening.

* * *

It turned out to be a most convivial occasion. The piano had been moved into the library from its usual home in the ballroom, which gave Lady Hardcastle an opportunity to show off. She provided an elegant accompaniment to a handful of Christmas carols which we sang together. Several of the company remembered the choral parts, which made the whole thing less of a hearty sing-song and more of a beautifully harmonic celebration of the season.

We eventually exhausted the Christmas repertoire, though. By and by, we were stood down in favour of Sir Hector’s sister, Mrs Adaway, whose rich contralto voice brought an unexpectedly tender touch to one or two sentimental songs. Perhaps she had a heart after all.

With the room thus blanketed in a mood of wistful melancholy, it fell to Sir Edward and his pal Julius Goodheart to revive the party spirit and set us back on the road to seasonal merrymaking. This they achieved by means of a medley of music-hall songs. After a brief confab with Lady Hardcastle, which made them look just as suspiciously conspiratorial as the children had earlier, they launched into a routine to rival many of the acts we’d seen at the professional theatre.

By the time they were done, the room was once more buoyant and jolly, and I swear I even saw Mrs Adaway clapping along at one point. With our spirits restored, the two men, who had taken on the role of ringleaders in the festivities, announced that it was time for games.

Hot Boiled Beans involved the hiding of a small object while one person was out of the room, and then encouraging them to find it by telling them they were ‘getting warmer’. This was followed, at Hattie Beaufort’s insistence, by a few rounds of The Minister’s Cat, a feline whose traits and characteristics were presented in alphabetical order. She had chosen it because it was ‘one that the children can play with us’. When their turn came and they pronounced that the Minister’s Cat was a flappy cat, a gargling cat, a Hungarian cat and an itchy cat, we knew it had been a good choice.

Time wore on, and the vicar and his wife had to excuse themselves so that he could prepare for Midnight Mass. This was taken as an opportunity to send the children off so that their nannies could get them ready for the trip to church. The self-appointed Masters of Mirth were keen that this interruption should not signal an end to the fun, though, and asked if anyone had any games we could play before we all set off for the service.

Earlier that year, Lady Hardcastle and I had spent a week at Codrington Hall in Rutland in the company of Lord Riddlethorpe and his family, notably his eccentrically badly behaved Uncle Algy. The old boy knew (or had invented) a number of bawdy parlour games, and Lady Hardcastle suggested two: St Uguzo’s Holy Cheese, and Jean-Pierre’s Magical Vineyard.

Having explained the simple rules of both games, she let the group choose. By unanimous vote, it was decided that St Uguzo’s Holy Cheese was the only game worth playing and we passed the rest of the evening playing that hilariously smutty game. Lady Farley-Stroud and her sister were every bit as racy as predicted with a few glasses of punch inside them, while Sir Hector seemed to be taking most of his enjoyment from observing his own sister’s mounting outrage.

By a quarter past eleven we were exhausted by the unceasing laughter, and it came as a relief when Sir Hector announced that it was time for coats and hats and the twenty-minute walk down the hill to the village church.

We left them to stagger back up the hill after the service, and instead made the much shorter journey back to the house. There would be ample opportunity to rejoin the festivities tomorrow, but for now the call of a cozy bed in familiar surroundings was too strong for me to ignore, and I knew Lady Hardcastle felt the same. We wished them all a merry Christmas for the umpteenth time and set off across the green.