‘That’s hardly surprising. We never knew him. They probably thought it would be tactless, since we’re occupying the house for the summer.’
‘We’ll start at Lania’s cocktail party,’ I decided. ‘Surely, after a few drinks, we ought to be able to guide the conversation around to poor John Blake and his sudden tragic death.’
Sixteen
It was a bright enough idea, but I’d overlooked a vital point: when we got to Lania’s cocktail party, there was only one topic of conversation. That was what she had meant by ‘the unveiling’.
I gasped as we crossed the threshold of the drawing-room. It had been redone completely. Instead of the cold, stark ice-floes, we stepped into a jungle. Deep lush green everywhere, leafy-patterned drapes and upholstery, bark-like furniture frames and tables like old tree stumps. Here and there, a splash of vivid colour denoted tropical blooms and sometimes actually were. I glanced down at my staid black dress with regret; I could have worn the crimson chiffon again and passed as a frangipani.
‘Whew-ew!’ Arnold whistled under his breath. ‘All that’s missing is the voodoo drums ... and, maybe, the Earl of Greystoke.’
‘Speaking of which –’ As my eyes became accustomed to the wild profusion, I began to pick out feces and forms. ‘Look over there – behind the trailing vine.’
Lania, in a tropical white sleeveless dress and Piers, in pale tan trousers and safari jacket, were holding court at another oversized tree stump. They were dispensing drinks and greeting. All they lacked were pith helmets.
‘Heh-heh –’ Arnold began and I nudged him sharply in the ribs. 'I could have worn my Bermuda shorts!’ he gasped. We began edging our way over to Lania across the verdigreen and sludge swamp that was masquerading as a carpet – or vice versa.
‘One gets so bored with things always being the same,’ Lania was saying as we reached the jungle bar.
‘It’s certainly very dramatic,’ a disembodied voice said. The effect was so uncanny that I blinked and looked hard in the direction of the voice. I found one of the neighbours who had been incautious enough to wear a green-patterned dress and thus had almost disappeared into the scenery.
We murmured our congratulations to Lania, collected our drinks, and retreated to the far side of the swamp.
‘I don’t see why she changed everything,’ Arnold complained. ‘And what did she do with all that other furniture?’ His New England soul was affronted by conspicuous waste. ‘It was all practically brand new.’
‘Maybe it’s your fault,’ I said. ‘You ruined her hedge out front, so she’s moved all the greenery in here where you can’t get at it again. There’s probably some deep psychological –’
‘Ah-hem ...’ There was a throat-clearing noise behind us. We turned to discover our putative host.
‘Oh, Richard, I’d –’ I stopped short. I couldn’t very well say, I’d forgotten all about you. Even though I had. Lania and Piers seemed so perfect a couple it was sometimes hard to remember that they weren’t. Especially when they were engaged in the sort of double act they were doing now. Richard was the one who looked more out of place than some of the guests.
‘Hi, Richard!’ Arnold covered my lapse quickly. ‘Never a dull moment, hey?’
‘Well, hardly ever,’ Richard murmured. He was leaning against the window frame, surveying the room with the air of a man who had built his castle on shifting sands.
‘It’s pretty sensational,’ Arnold went on, ‘but I must admit I kinda liked the room the way it was before.’
‘So did I.’ Richard took a sip of his drink. And the way it was before that, and before that.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll get used to it, I suppose. I always do.’
‘You mean this keeps on happening?’ Arnold was stunned. He’d never believed me when I tried to tell him that other people redecorate their homes every decade or so, whether they need it or not.
‘Ever since I was foolish enough to bring Piers home for dinner one evening and he joined our family circle.’ Richard darted a baleful glare in the direction of the smooth blond head and writhed uncomfortably. He was wearing a T-shirt and tight blue jeans as his interpretation of what the well-dressed jungle explorer should wear. He had chosen wrong and he knew it. ‘I should have worn a dinner jacket,’ he muttered. ‘Then I could be the stiff upper lipped sahib, keeping up the standards of civilization while the storm clouds gathered.’
‘You look just fine,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘No one –’ I stopped again. No one is looking at you, anyway, while true, could not be expected to be comforting.
‘What happens -?’ Arnold returned to his original speculation. ‘What happens to the furniture? This –’ he tapped the rough bark of a nearby chair – ‘this isn’t your old stuff, recycled, is it?’
‘Oh, no.’ Richard shook his head and sipped again at his drink. I did not have the feeling that it was the drink that caused his lips to twist bitterly. ‘Oh, no, we’ve turned a nice profit on the last lot. Don’t worry about that. Piers brought some wealthy friends to tea last week, while I was at work. By sheer chance –’ his lips twisted again – ‘they were doing up a new flat in Mayfair. They were so taken with the decor that – they took it. Very nice price. Allowed Lania and dear Piers to do all this and still have a nice profit left over.’
‘It’s really quite nice.’ I tried to sound encouraging.
‘Don’t get too fond of it. It will only last until the next customer comes along. Sometimes, I think we should charge dear Piers a rental fee. We’re saving him from paying for a showroom, after all. But I don’t suppose Lania would wear it. She’s quite content to let her family act as guinea pigs.’
Arnold and I exchanged glances. This wasn’t going the way we had planned it. The room – or jungle clearing – was pretty crowded now. We hadn’t realized it was going to be such a big party. Lania had made it sound as though just a few friends were dropping in. There were dozens of people we didn’t know.
They all seemed to know each other, though, and were gathering in little cliques, backs turned to any outsiders. I was beginning to feel nearly as invisible as the woman in the green dress.
‘Still, it’s nice you made a profit.’ Arnold turned back to Richard, who seemed the only one willing to carry on a conversation with us. Maybe because no one else was clamouring for his attention. An occasional cool nod was as much as he was accorded from people moving forward eagerly to speak to Lania and Piers. I began to suspect that this was a reception for his customers – past, present and potential. That would explain a lot of things.
‘What did you do with the kids?’ I asked. I could not imagine throwing a party without the twins underfoot. From an early age, they had learned to make themsleves useful by passing round the canapés and peanuts.
‘They’re upstairs,’ Richard said. “They live upstairs, poor little devils. They prefer it – and I don’t blame them.’
‘Children don’t like change very much,’ I agreed.
Richard gave a short bitter laugh, looked in surprise at his empty glass, and lurched away for a refill.
‘Well,’ Arnold said, ‘do you think we ought to circulate?’
‘We could try.’ I looked at all the backs turned to us. ‘But maybe we ought to finish our drinks first.’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Arnold acted on it. ‘Better than the last one you had. Or do you think any of these people knew John Blake? They don’t seem to be locals – their accents are different.’
‘I think this is a high-grade Tupperware party,’ I said. ‘Except that the furnishings are for sale instead of any smaller items.’
‘You could be right.’ Arnold looked sympathetic. ‘Imagine having the furniture sold out from under you every time you turned around. It’s enough to make a man wonder if he’s in the right house if he comes home late at night.’
‘Oh!’ I spotted a familiar back. ‘There’s somebody we know!’ Standing alone, her back to us, she was looking around uncertainly. She didn’t seem
to know anyone here, either.
‘Hazel –’ I raised my voice above the crescendo of babbling voices. ‘Here we are – come and join us. Hazel?’
Hazel moved off without even glancing round at us.
‘Well! Well, how do you like that? She could at least have said hello.’
‘Poor old Hazel –’ Richard had returned to us, bearing a full glass. ‘Don’t mind her. She does that every now and again. We think she’s a bit deaf. One has to be facing her and speaking clearly. Otherwise, well, you saw her –’ He shrugged. ‘We tried to joke with her about it once, but she got quite upset. It’s obviously a sensitive subject. Go over and tap her on the shoulder. Once you’ve got her attention, she’s all right. She concentrates then.’
‘Okay.’ I stalked Hazel across the swamp. She was walking aimlessly, obviously looking for familiar faces.
‘Hazel –’ I tapped her on the shoulder, as instructed. She swung round to face me and broke into a wide smile. That was it, then, she hadn’t meant to snub us, she just hadn’t heard me. Not that it was too surprising anyway, the party was entering a very noisy stage.
‘Hazel, we’re over by the window.’ I enunciated carefully. ‘Come and join us.’
‘Fine.’ Her eyes carefully watching my lips, she nodded. ‘I'd love to. I was beginning to think I’d walked into the wrong party. I don’t seem to know anyone here.’
‘Neither do we. And when you add to that the fact that there’s been a radical change in the decor —Well, if I hadn’t seen Lania and Richard around, I’d have thought I was in the wrong house.’
‘And Piers,’ Hazel added absently. We twitched eyebrows at each other.
‘Hazel, honey!’ Arnold greeted her with an arm around her shoulder and a peck on the cheek. ‘Great to see you!’
There was a slight stir in a nearby group and I became aware that one of the men had so far broken formation as to have turned and actually looked at us. At Arnold and Hazel – and there was an unpleasant look in his eyes.
‘Er –’ I nudged Hazel and inclined my head towards the watcher. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Never saw him before in my life.’ She glanced at him just as he turned away – a bit too quickly to be casual. She frowned. ‘Not that I recall,’ she amended.
‘Maybe he’s a friend of your husband’s – keeping an eye on you for him.’ That would explain the disapproval at Arnold’s gesture of affection.
‘My husband has no friends.’ She spoke without thinking; she had gone pale.
‘Then he’s a smart man,’ Richard approved. His gaze wandered over our heads and found Piers. He had drunk just a bit too much and his stiff upper lip was in danger of wobbling. ‘That way, he’ll never get into trouble.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Hazel laughed nervously. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant he doesn’t have time to make friends, the way he’s always travelling for the firm. Now that we’ve bought our house here, of course, we’re planning to settle down and things will change.’
Perhaps I ought to start travelling myself,’ Richard murmured. ‘Your husband can settle down here – and I’ll take off. The swings and the roundabouts. Win some, lose some.’
‘You don’t want to do that,’ I told him. ‘You’ve already lost one good man around here. Look at John Blake.’
Okay, so I dragged the subject in by its heels and maybe I might have been more tactful about it. But how was I to know it would cause Hazel to burst into tears and run from the room?
Seventeen
‘Oh-oh, you stepped on some toes there, honey,’ Arnold said. ‘I guess she still feels awful about it.’
Fortunately, nobody else seemed to notice, not even the man who had been glaring at us. The party was in full swing and. people were interested only in their own little cliques. Those who weren’t interested in Lania and Piers, that is.
There was quite a crowd around them now and it wasn’t just because the bar was there. Piers was holding forth on some anecdote that was being hilariously received. Lania beamed beside him, interpolating small corrections to the story. They looked very intimate, very cosy, very much the host and hostess.
‘It’s always the wrong person who dies,’ Richard brooded. ‘Have you ever noticed?’
‘You mean John Blake?’ Arnold was deliberately obtuse. It was perfectly plain that Richard would have liked to have seen Piers drive over a cliff.
‘Poor old John, poor devil. Everything to live for – and look what happened.’
‘It’s a tough world, all right,’ Arnold sympathized.
‘Terrible,’ I agreed. ‘A nice man like that. A man with no enemies ...’ I let the thought trail off, fishing.
‘Wife who loved him ... children who looked up to him ... everyone in town respected him. Man on his way up ... might even have stood for Parliament some day. And won. No telling where he could have gone and – pffit! – over! Just like that.’
‘A shame,’ Arnold agreed. We dipped our heads in brief mourning while I tried to formulate the next leading question.
‘Other men wouldn’t even be missed –’ Richard’s baleful gaze was fastened on Piers. ‘Small loss to the world.’
Arnold and I looked at each other and remained silent. To agree, would have been to admit that the situation was becoming uncomfortably clear.
‘Rosemary –’ I began, by way of getting back to the main subject. ‘Rosemary must have been –’
‘Especially me –’ Richard tossed down the last of his drink, still brooding over his wife and Piers. ‘They’d never miss me.’
For a terrible moment, I thought there was going to be a real rooting-tooting scene. Then Richard turned back to us and smiled affably.
‘Let me get you another drink.’ He collected the glasses from our nerveless hands and headed for the tree stump bar.
‘That was close, Babe,’ Arnold said judiciously. ‘That was very close, indeed.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ We watched uneasily, but Richard merely handed the glasses to Lania to refill and waited beside her as she did so, neatly cutting her off from Piers and establishing his place at her side. Piers had the good sense to move away and begin mingling with his guests. ‘But it’s all blown over, I guess.’
‘For this time, anyway,’ Arnold said.
Richard seemed in no hurry to return to us; everybody else seemed intent on ignoring us. I’d had more fun at an Irish wake.
‘I don’t know about you, Arnold, but I feel a deep boredom setting in.’
‘Me, too.’ Arnold surreptitiously checked his watch. ‘Do you think we can decently leave? We haven’t been here very long.’
‘It seems like hours.’ Just then I felt something brush my ankles and muffled a shriek. I hadn’t thought it was that kind of party. I sidestepped and glanced down. A familiar marmalade figure made a fresh assault on my ankles, twining round them.
‘Esmond!’ I swooped and caught him up. ‘What are you doing here? Who let you in?’
‘Never mind that,’ Arnold said, chucking Esmond under the chin with approval. ‘Here’s our ticket out of here. We’ll have to take him home.’
‘Yes, we will, won’t we?’ I brightened. ‘He must have slipped in when Hazel left. Clever Esmond, to find us in all this crowd.’
A couple of people standing nearby began smiling in our direction. Esmond was obviously more socially acceptable than we were. But it was too late, I just wanted to leave.
‘You’re not going?’ Richard intercepted us at the door. ‘I’ve just got your drinks.’
‘Esmond sneaked in to join the party.’ We accepted the drinks, since it seemed churlish not to, but continued edging towards the exit. ‘We’ve got to take him home.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Richard patted Esmond’s head absently.
‘Not much for you at this party, Esmond. We usually have cocktail sausages, bits of cheese, things like that,’ he explained. ‘But this is a gathering of more serious drinkers. Lania decided just
olives, nuts and Bombay mixture for them. Look on the bright side, Esmond – if they get drunk enough, someone may buy this jungle out from under us before we actually have to live in it.’
‘Good luck on that, fella,’ Arnold said.
‘I live in hope.’ Richard followed us to the front door. We drank hastily, trying to empty the glasses and escape before Esmond grew restive.
‘If you get tired of all the foliage, come next door,’ Arnold invited, ‘and refresh your memory as to how the other half lives.’
‘I might do that,’ Richard agreed. ‘By next week, I could have reached the breaking point.’
‘That’s stamina,’ Arnold admired. ‘I don’t think I could hold out much past Saturday myself.’
‘Ah, but that’s only because I’ll be away for a long weekend,’ Richard said. ‘I have a site inspection and conferences scheduled in Edinburgh. I may not get back until Monday or Tuesday; it depends how it goes.’
‘Well –’ I drained my glass and set it down on the hall table – I think it was a hall table. ‘Sorry to leave, but we’ve got to get this cat home. Thank you so much. It’s been –’
‘Please –’ He held up his hand, cutting me off in mid-lie. ‘I quite understand. In fact, I quite agree.’
Although the party was a washout, Arnold was not deterred from his new project. The thought that someone was gunning for him had concentrated his mind wonderfully.
‘We’ll have to go to direct sources,’ he announced in the morning. Then amended, ‘I’ll have to.’
‘Arnold –’ I was immediately nervous. ‘You can’t go up and down the street with a notebook asking searching questions. The neighbours think we’re crazy enough already.’
‘Not that direct, honey. I mean records, reports, documents. All the stuff of history, only it’s contemporary this time. Just a few months old –’ He could hardly contain his enthusiasm.
‘Compared to my usual research, the printers’ ink will still be wet on the documents. There are bound to be leads I can follow up – and the trail won’t lead through dusty parchment and old books. It will lead to people with living memories, able to recount their stories in the flesh. It’s a historian’s dream –’ He came down to earth abruptly. ‘Or, it would be, if it wasn’t my neck on the chopping block.’
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