“Steady on,” Freddie said. “I’ll panic when Mine Host does.” She nodded toward Dorian, who was standing at the top of the steps, sipping his drink and looking down with amusement at the scene below.
Some of the men had begun kicking at the wood at the base of the fire, trying to collapse it. Jack and Karla glimmered like twin ghosts as they ran around to the other side of the bonfire, obviously hoping that it wasn’t burning so furiously there.
“Where’s the garden hose?” someone shouted. Gordie broke away and ran toward the garden shed.
“Call the Fire Brigade!” someone else shouted.
Dorian gave a wave of acknowledgment and stayed where he was.
“Nice night for a murder,” Freddie said between clenched teeth. “But not even Dorian would have the nerve to –”
With a gigantic roar, the dummy burst apart, sending rockets thundering in every direction. Most of them erupted into the sky, but some fell back and slithered down the bonfire or snaked along the lawn. The explosions were deafening.
The world was a sudden terrifying nightmare, a war zone thrust into their midst. Abruptly, everyone deserted the bonfire and, covering their ears or trying to shield their faces, ran for the shelter of the house as out-of-control rockets showered their coloured starbursts all around them. The sky was alight with a display that must have been visible miles away. An ear-splittingly noisy display. If it had this effect on humans ...
“And Dorian wanted us to bring our pets along,” Lorinda said bitterly. The mental pictures running through her mind didn’t bear watching: Had-I and But-Known, Roscoe, Lionheart and Conqueror, terrified out of their wits, bolting away into the darkness, running for safety and winding up lost, alone, frightened, hungry ...
“Relax.” Freddie patted her arm. “It didn’t happen. You’re all nice responsible pet owners, so Dorian didn’t get his cheap laugh. What does he know about pets and responsibility? That tank of stupid fish is just about right for him – he’s a cold fish himself.”
The excitement was almost over now. Only a sporadic rocket issued from the heap of rags to explode against the sky. Shrieks and gasps were giving way to nervous ripples of laughter.
“That was quite a show, Dorian. You really had them going for a minute.” Plantagenet spoke as though he hadn’t joined the panic-stricken rush to rescue the dummy himself. He was busy behind the bar again. Not surprisingly, there was a rush for more drinks.
“I can see that having you around is going to liven up the village no end.” Jennifer Lane spoke with a certain amount of reserve. Lorinda remembered that the bookshop had a resident cat; had Jennifer been urged to bring it along? “You’re going to keep us on our toes.”
Dorian was smiling blandly, nodding approval as Gordie spread the last of the sausages on the grill. Betty Alvin appeared from the kitchen regions carrying a tray of fruit-and-whipped-cream tarts, to be greeted with appreciative cries. The bonfire was dying down, the flickering glow not quite lighting the terrace anymore. Most of the light was streaming out from the drawing room, most of the guests were gravitating to the warmth and comfort inside, where someone had ignited the logs in the fireplace. One of them cast a lingering glance back to the guttering bonfire.
Once again, shrill screams rang through the night. This time the finger was pointing to the pale ghostlike figure lying face down in the smouldering embers of the dying bonfire.
In that silent horrified moment before people began dashing forward, the edges of the fawn jacket smouldered, blackened and lit with a pale flickering flame.
5
“I wish I didn’t feel so damned guilty,” Freddie said. “Here I’ve been moaning for weeks about all the noise and fighting and wishing for some peace and quiet – and now that I’ve got it, do I feel pleased? No, I just feel guilty.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Macho said. “And it isn’t as if he were dead. It’s a good thing he threw up his arm to protect his face as he fell. The arm is badly burned, but he’ll be able to use it again ... eventually. And,” he added with satisfaction, “the camera is a complete write-off.”
“But,” Freddie said, “there’s such a thing as ill-wishing.”
“In that case, it’s my fault,” Macho said. “I’ll guarantee I wished him iller than you did.”
“Oh, stop it, both of you!” Absently, Lorinda held out a potato crisp for Roscoe to nibble. “You’re beginning to sound like Dame Isolde Llewellyn!”
“You needn’t be insulting,” Freddie said.
Dame Isolde Llewellyn was Rhylla Montague’s series character, a concert harpsichordist and possibly a spy, and, even more possibly, a white witch with a sideline of dabbling in spells and mixing strange potions to ensure love or other useful reactions. (How else had she been created a Dame before her fortieth birthday?)
“Poor Rhylla.” Macho was diverted. “Imagine having a grandchild descending and a deadline in the same month.”
“I saw her driving past this morning, looking rather martyred,” Lorinda said.
“She’s gone full-tilt at the martyr’s crown,” Freddie said. “She even stopped to pick up Karla to drop her off at the hospital on her way to the station to collect Clarice. Karla will take a taxi back when she’s had enough of cheering the patient. That shouldn’t take long. Since the accident didn’t actually kill him, she’s pretty annoyed with him for his clumsiness.”
Had-I and But-Known strolled in from the kitchen, where they had been sampling Roscoe’s rations, licking their chops. Had-I halted abruptly as she saw Lorinda cosseting Roscoe; her eyes narrowed. Ostentatiously, she marched over to Macho and jumped into his lap. Automatically, he began stroking her.
But-Known reacted more with sorrow than anger. She gave Lorinda an accusing look, then slowly walked over to leap up on to the arm of Freddie’s chair. Equally automatically, Freddie reached out to rub her ears.
“God, how I miss my darling little Horatio,” she sighed. Her eyes misted over. “It’s all very well having your darlings come visiting, but I want a cat of my own.” She brightened. “Now that we’re getting settled in, perhaps I could manage one. If you’d be willing to look after it occasionally when I have to go up to London or over to New York?”
“No trouble at all,” Macho agreed quickly.
There was a moment’s silence, while Freddie blinked several times, as though restraining tears. Macho visibly grew more nervous; he hated tears.
The throb of a diesel engine outside broke into the uneasy atmosphere, promising relief.
“A taxi!” Macho leaped out of his chair, sending a protesting Had-I tumbling to the floor. “That must be Karla. Why don’t we invite her to join us for tea?” He dashed for his front door and they heard him hailing her.
“A cup of tea and the company of friends.” Karla smiled at them as Macho shepherded her into the room. “Just what I need right now.”
“How is Jack?” Lorinda asked.
“Jack?” Karla looked at her blankly. “Oh, Jack! That stumblebum! As well as can be expected, what else? If he’d been paying attention to what he was doing for one moment, it would never have happened.” She flung herself into an armchair and closed her eyes.
The others took the opportunity to raise eyebrows at each other. The verdict seemed a bit unfair on poor Jack, who had been trying to rescue what he thought was a live victim on top of the bonfire. He hadn’t even paused to take any pictures.
Roscoe was more forgiving. He abandoned Lorinda abruptly to scramble on to the arm of Karla’s chair and rub against her bowed head. Like Macho, he hated tears and emotional upsets. His anxious chirrup penetrated her gloom.
“Hello, sweetheart.” She reached for him. Roscoe braced himself against her grappling embrace and gave her a friendly head-butt on the chin.
“It was careless of Dorian to plant that torch where someone could trip over it,” Lorinda said.
“No one else fell over it,” Karla said broodingly. “Only idiot-boy.”
�
��You’re sure tea will be enough?” Macho returned from the kitchen with another cup and saucer. “If you’d like something stronger ...?”
“Tea will be fine,” Karla said. “I’m not that devastated. I’m just damned annoyed.”
“At least Jack’s being taken care of on the National Health.” Freddie offered comfort. “Just imagine if this had happened in New York.”
“Don’t!” Karla shuddered so violently that Roscoe meowed in protest. “He let our health insurance lapse! That’s another little gem he sprang on me just before we left the States. He forgot to pay the premiums – he says!”
Freddie whistled softly and looked quizzically into her own cup, as though hoping the tea leaves might reveal what some of the other gems had been.
“Well, you won’t need it this year,” Macho said cheerfully. “You can pick it up again when you go back –” He broke off; Karla’s look of fury had struck him like a blow across the face.
“Tell me –” Lorinda tried to lower the temperature by changing the subject. “How are you getting along with Miss Mudd?”
“Don’t ask me!” Karla swung violently to face her. Roscoe protested faintly. “I hate the damned creature! I always did!”
“Then why did you take on the series?” It was a tactless question, but it slipped out before Lorinda could stop it.
“Money, of course.” Karla’s face shuttered. “And ... there were other considerations.”
“The Mudd books are money-spinners,” Macho conceded. “I’m not surprised the publishers want to keep them going. There’s a lot of that about these days. They’ve even been reviving long-defunct series characters and farming them out to new writers.”
“New writers, I can understand.” Freddie surveyed Karla thoughtfully. “Anything to get a foot in the door. But you have a successful series of your own. You can’t need to take on someone else’s.”
“Oh, yes. Toni and Terri – the all-American backpackers, hiking their way around the world and into adventure and murder.” Karla gave a short mirthless bark of laughter. Roscoe twitched uneasily. “How I’ve grown to hate the little bastards!”
“We all feel like that at times, I’m sure.” Lorinda tried not to think of the guilty chapters lurking in her filing cabinet.
“You have no children of your own?” Freddie asked. “No teenagers? No adolescents you’ve left behind in boarding school?”
“You mean, am I sublimating? Are my backpackers really the kids I never had?” Karla laughed bitterly. “No, we had a son. He was killed in a car crash when he was ten. Jack was driving. Everything began going downhill after that.”
“I’m sorry,” Freddie said inadequately, obviously regretting ever having raised the subject.
“What about you?” Karla challenged her. “All of you? I know your work, but I don’t know anything about any of you personally. Just the little bits I’ve been able to piece together since we moved here. If you’re going to question me, fair’s fair. Freddie, you’ve obviously spent some time in the States – there’s a trace of a familiar accent, plus an Americanism every now and then. What about you?”
“You got me!” Freddie grimaced. “I did a stint in advertising in New York. Had quite a pleasant life there for nearly a decade: plenty of money, nice apartment, darling cat, not to mention the obligatory affair. Then” – she shrugged – “everything seemed to go wrong at once. The cat died, the lover went off with a new and improved younger model, the landlord raised the rent to an even more extortionate level – and the advertising agency was taken over, with the usual claims that nothing was going to change, even as the new upper echelon began eyeing the existing talent to see who they could do without. I can read the handwriting on the wall as well as anyone else. I had enough put by to support me for a couple of years while I found out whether I could really write a book. I took the money and ran. Back here, where I still had some family and friends.”
And where she could lick her wounds in privacy and rebuild her life, Lorinda thought. It was more than she had ever heard Freddie tell about herself, although she had pieced most of it together from hints Freddie had let drop. That was really the proper way to find out about other people, she felt, not this pouring out of facts Americans seemed to require.
“And you?” Lorinda flinched as Karla faced her relentlessly.
“There isn’t much to tell,” Lorinda said slowly. “I was a late child, an only child. My parents were nearly fifty so I came as quite a surprise to them. By the time I’d graduated from university, my mother was quite ill and my father couldn’t cope. Fortunately, I was able to write while I looked after them. I did a few other books before I dreamed up Miss Petunia and her sisters. They did well enough here and were a great hit in the States. So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Between that and caring for my parents, it rather cut me off from my own generation and ... well ...” She emulated Freddie’s shrug. “Eventually my parents died ... and here I am.”
“How sad.” Karla’s perfunctory tone really meant, “How boring.” She turned avidly to Macho and waited expectantly.
“This is rather painful ... I don’t usually talk about it.” He was not going to disappoint her. He took a deep breath and sent the ghost of a wink to Freddie and Lorinda.
“My wife and I were teachers at a mission school in Africa. This was some years ago and we had no idea of the underlying tensions that were about to tear the Continent apart. Even when the revolutions and uprisings began, they were in distant parts of the country. Oh, we heard the usual rumours of atrocities and, as the unrest crept closer to our territory, we even began to discuss the advisability of returning to England. But it still didn’t seem quite possible that it could happen to us ... and so ... we left it too late.” He shuddered and covered his eyes with one hand, head bowed.
“We were armed by then, of course. We weren’t complete fools. We knew trouble was coming closer every day. We sent out a call for help just as the Mission compound was besieged – and then we prayed. As the days dragged past and our supplies grew low, we began to fear that no one had heard our pleas for help. Our ammunition was even lower than the food – and we’d maddened the rebels by our resistance. There would be no mercy for us when they broke through our defences.”
“How terrible!” Karla’s eyes were round, her breath ragged. “But you made it all right. You’re here.”
“I’m here,” Macho said brokenly. “But my wife ... and not just mine. You see ... we knew ... the drill. You loved her, so you saved the last bullet ... for her.”
“No!” Karla’s eyes opened even wider.
“We all knew what had to be done. When the terrorists breached the barricades and swarmed into the compound, we retreated into an inner room ... and then ...” He had not uncovered his eyes, his voice quavered.
“Then I put the gun to her temple ... she smiled at me ... I pulled the trigger. All around me, I could hear the other shots and the crash of the front door being broken down. Then ... I ... we ... heard the sound of helicopters swooping down on us. Help had arrived ... too late.”
“Oh, my God!” Karla gasped in horror.
Why didn’t we think of something like that? Lorinda and Freddie met each other’s eyes in gleeful collusion. Good for Macho! It was a lot more exciting than admitting that he had been a schoolmaster teaching history in a minor public school when his wife ran away with his best friend.
“Oh, you poor –” Karla began.
“Please –” Macho lurched to his feet and waved a hand, stopping her. “I ... I’m afraid I ... It’s brought it all back. Forgive me –” He rushed from the room.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Karla began apologizing to those remaining. “I didn’t mean to upset him. I had no idea –”
Roscoe gave her an accusing look and jumped from her lap, pursuing Macho into the kitchen.
“Now even the cat is mad at me,” Karla mourned.
“I think it will be better if we never speak of this again,”
Freddie said gravely.
“Yes, of course. I agree.” Karla was still shaken, her own troubles forgotten. “I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t for the world have –”
There was a muffled clatter from the kitchen, followed by the sharp crack of an ice-cube tray being broached. Had-I and But-Known were instantly alert. That meant the fridge door had been opened and Roscoe was already on the scene and might be getting treats. They abandoned their posts and headed purposefully for the kitchen.
“I think maybe –” Karla stood, then hovered indecisively. “Maybe I ought to leave now? Maybe we all ought to?”
“No need for that.” Freddie was settled comfortably and had identified the activity around the fridge as surely as the cats had. “Macho will be all right. And we can’t leave him now ... to his memories.”
“Oh! Maybe that wouldn’t be kind...?” Karla looked to Lorinda for confirmation.
“Here we are.” Macho returned, carrying a tray with ice bucket, glasses, cheeseboard and crackers. Roscoe sauntered along beside him, waving his tail complacently, as though he had organized the refreshments all by himself. Had-I and But-Known followed behind, their gaze firmly fixed on the large chunk of cheddar that they especially favoured.
“Oh, well ...” Karla sat down again.
“Time for something stronger than tea,” Macho announced, setting his tray down on the coffee table. The cats moved forward and began circling the table in an elaborately casual manner while Macho mixed the drinks.
“Have some cheese,” he urged. “Not you!” He pushed Roscoe’s questing muzzle away. “Guests first. Where are your manners?”
“Oh ... thank you.” Karla cut a triangle of cheddar nervously, obviously not accustomed to three pairs of little eyes watching her every movement. They were waiting for her to drop it. Had-I spoke sharply and she obliged.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Quite all right,” Macho said cheerfully. “Won’t be wasted.” Three blurs of fur pounced, proving him right. “Nothing to clean up, either. Quick, cut yourself another piece while they’re busy.”
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