As the conversation began in earnest he was reminded of the Veneering dinner party in Our Mutual Friend. In Dickens’s novel the guests were latently dependent on their benefactor, but in this case the benefactor had not deigned to join them. It was all very odd.
Studying the portraits in the dining room, Bryant recognized the common features of Tavistock Hall’s Hanoverian and Victorian residents, extending up to and including Harry Banks-Marion. All had such protruding eyes, ruddy cheeks and weak chins that generations of artists had clearly reached a mutual understanding and abandoned any attempt to ameliorate the family’s hereditary appearance. Instead their patrons had been arranged in Corinthian poses, at sunset, surrounded with spaniels, hidden among baskets of flowers or inside voluminous folds of material. It might have worked if the paintings had not been placed together in a row. Organized in a timeline to the present day the descendants rapidly became caricatures, looking like increasingly distorted funhouse mirrors.
At the end of the row of portraits were Beatrice, Lady Banks-Marion, placed before a rose-draped pergola at sunset in an attempt to soften her, and Harry, painted sitting on a kitchen chair in the style of Augustus John, in an attempt to harden him. Beyond them was only a melancholy blank space, suggesting that the evolutionary line had turned into a cul-de-sac.
As Bryant looked around at the assembled diners, a distant alarm bell sounded in the back of his brain. He felt as if he was being presented with the first clues to a puzzle that had yet to reveal itself, but this feeling was displaced by the arrival of the waiters and the horror of brown Windsor soup. As the ladling-out began, the dining room succumbed to the atmosphere of a municipal care home.
At the last minute, one more guest swayed in. The table collectively turned to look and fell silent. They saw an impossibly perfect blonde with coral lipstick, black eyeliner, gold hoop earrings and lemon-yellow high heels. She wore a very short, low-cut lavender and rose net gown, and looked like one of those European starlets who went by a single name. She was also drunk. The temperature and tension torqued sharply. Eyeballs swivelled back to the only person who had not moved – Norma Burke.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ said Vanessa Harrow, offering a sunny if unfocused smile. ‘The only cab I could find had an ugly driver so I held out for one a little more hansom. Ha ha.’
There was a small deathly silence before the conversation renewed itself. Miss Harrow seemed unfazed and swayed about the room looking for somewhere to park herself.
Arthur Bryant found himself seated beside a nondescript cardigan-clad woman who ignored his only stab at conversation and opposite a young, intense-looking vicar with whom he knew better than to attempt one.
May was having an easier time of it, as the stunning late arrival had pulled up her own chair and wedged herself in next to him, throwing out the table’s carefully planned order. For some unearthly reason she seemed to find May’s every utterance shriekingly hilarious. Bryant was mystified by the easy charm that made his partner so magnetic to half-cut women. He wondered if they would have to keep the same table-places all weekend, in which case he imagined the hours dragging past as if mired in treacle.
Serving the dinner on fine bone china did not make it more attractive. In the jellified soup, gristly chunks of beef surfaced like stewed wads of chewing gum. The starter was followed by a choice of haddock lacquered in burned cheese or fatty slices of peppered beef lying in a pool of crimson gore, each paired with a selection of overcooked, carminative vegetables.
Bryant prodded the beef with his fork and leaned over to his partner. ‘This bull isn’t dead, it’s just hurt. Any decent vet could get it back on its feet. And why would anyone cover fish in cheese unless they had something to hide? It’s all stone cold.’
‘I imagine it’s a fair walk from the kitchen,’ May replied. ‘Haven’t you noticed? We’re being served last.’
Five minutes later Bryant tapped his partner on the arm with a fork again. He was growing bored and petulant. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Talk to your neighbour,’ said May. ‘Make an effort.’
Bryant looked down at the cardigan-woman’s plate, which was empty except for a small puddle of spinach. ‘Not hungry?’
She shot him a withering look. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
Of all the responses that flashed through his mind, the best would probably have been a silent nod and not, ‘So was Hitler.’
He added hastily, ‘I mean there were lots of other vegetarians too, Pythagoras, Voltaire, Tolstoy …’ When he looked back, she had turned away.
For dessert there was Black Forest gateau or spotted dick, coated with a poultice of rubbery custard. The room grew colder than the meal. Only the wine remained ruby and robust. Bryant caught slivers of conversation and found his thoughts drifting to crime novels he had read. Bodies in libraries, detectives in turmoil, accusations, theories and a surprise culprit. Could that happen here? It seemed as if all the key ingredients had been assembled. But which of the guests would be marked for death? Who would be prepared to kill?
The problem, he decided, was the crevasse that separated fiction from fact. Most crimes were sad and sordid affairs. Nothing unusual happened in country houses, or if it did it was kept hidden from public gaze.
At nine the group adjourned to Lupin, the library, for brandies poured from cut-crystal decanters arranged in ascending order of age, bearing silver tags around their necks like foundlings. Six immense bookcases stood against walls of willow-green damask, matched in silks that hung in graceful folds above a jade velvet sofa and an array of wingback armchairs. The carpet was a bronze-tinted Aubusson, its colours picked out in a leather folding screen. Armed with a candle taper, Parchment put in a brief reappearance, perhaps to assure the assembled guests that he had not passed away.
Bryant opened the French windows and went out to the patio, its herringbone brickwork blotched green and white from the roosting starlings that rattled and crackled in overhead crevices. The autumn clouds were pink and blue, crows calling in the dying light. Rabbits lolloped through the grass. Something in the bushes shrieked in pain, as if it was being torn apart. The trees were black against the sky.
He thought back over all he had heard and seen in Tavistock Hall so far, and the strange sense of foreboding settled over him once more. There were tiny signs – fractures in conversation, odd looks, unaired grievances – but no suspicions he could really put his finger on.
Digging through the secret pockets of the magician’s jacket for his pipe, he resigned himself to the less palatable conclusion that there would be no excitement this weekend. He looked up to the first-floor windows and counted them until he reached the master suite where Donald Burke and his wife had presumably taken up residence. Each of the corner rooms had a tall door leading on to the covered balcony.
Just then the Burkes’ door opened and a stout figure with long grey hair emerged, one hand on the paunch of a grey satin waistcoat, the other holding a cigar. His face was hidden by the shadow of the immense wisteria that had entwined itself around the balcony supports. He leaned against the railing smoking, his head inclined towards the darkening fields. He was wearing white gloves that stood out against the twilight.
Donald Burke was finally putting in an appearance.
A distant boom made the bricks tremble beneath Bryant’s feet and signalled the start of the army’s war games.
13
* * *
WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
May stepped out on to the patio, joining his partner. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘I just saw Donald Burke on the balcony.’
‘Is he coming down to join us?’
‘I don’t think so. Would you?’
‘I’m putting on a brave face,’ said May, lighting a Park Drive. ‘You, poor chap, couldn’t look more bored if you were dead. Perhaps you should switch places with me tomorrow.’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ said Bryant with a s
igh. ‘People react to me as if they’d just found a spider in the bath.’
‘Did you have the spotted dick?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Bryant, ‘I’m constipated enough as it is. Maybe you’re right, though. I should swap the grumpy old bag next to me for the girl who’s laughing at all your lame jokes.’
‘Oh, you mean the delectable Vanessa Harrow. She’s a nightclub singer. She drank gin with her dinner. Alberman clearly wasn’t pleased. She’s quite the most delightfully mercenary creature I’ve ever met. Her antennae extended any time somebody mentioned money. I rather like her honesty.’
‘You rather like all girls regardless of whether they turn out to be charming, venal or insane,’ Bryant reminded him. ‘Gladys calls you the Leicester Square Lothario. Monty’s making it pretty obvious that he doesn’t care for your companion.’
‘No, I think he cares for her too much. She’s avoiding him.’
‘Really? I missed that. I wonder why she was invited?’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ May tried to read his partner’s face but it was, as ever, a masterpiece of misinformation. ‘Look at her, Arthur! She’s young and gorgeous. She knows she’s gorgeous and uses it of course, but she doesn’t yet appreciate the fleeting power of youth. For now, though, she’d be invited to a funeral just to brighten up the service.’
‘Thank you. Wise words from the Carnaby Street Casanova.’ Bryant cleared his throat in a disapproving manner. ‘Our mystery millionaire isn’t showing much interest in her. He looked like he was thinking something over, as if he wanted to come down but something stopped him.’
‘Well, Monty’s starting to get agitated.’
They peered back into the library, Lupin. Hatton-Jones was by the fireplace smoking furiously and staring at the French windows as if thinking of making a break for it. Bryant studied him thoughtfully, trying to follow the undercurrents running through this odd gathering of guests. It was an alien experience, being among people with hidden agendas. When his own family and friends held a party it usually involved a piano and a knees-up in a pub, drinking after hours, old songs, old arguments, a fight and a few tears, the air cleared, friendships reaffirmed, and somewhere a kiss. It was messy, foolish, natural.
This was altogether more predatory and troubling.
The moon had risen in an ink-fresh sky. It cast a milky glow across the patio that faded off into indigo. As soon as the first chair was pushed back, everyone drifted outside to have a look.
‘What a pity Donald’s missing this, he’s probably forgotten the time,’ said the mellifluous Vanessa, appearing beside May and taking his arm with a natural carelessness that he found delightful. ‘It must be an easy thing to do in such a lovely place. I forget things all the time. I’m as silly as a sheep.’
‘We know, dear,’ Norma Burke added. ‘Perhaps I should go and check on him, seeing as he’s my husband.’
‘Everyone knows why Vanessa’s here: to be with Donald,’ Slade Wilson confided to May as Norma Burke and Vanessa Harrow went back inside. ‘Norma seems to have accepted it.’
‘Perhaps she has no say in the matter,’ said May.
‘Perhaps she relishes the opportunity of insulting her rival all weekend,’ replied Wilson. ‘Lord Byron said that a mistress can never be a friend. When you agree, you’re lovers, and when it’s over, you’re enemies.’
‘Ah, there you are,’ cried Monty, slapping Wilson on the back. ‘Can’t you find some coon music to cheer the place up?’
Wilson shot Bryant a look of secret complicity. Don’t say anything. ‘I’m afraid Lord Banks-Marion has commandeered the record player.’
His lordship had put on a Pink Floyd album that sounded like someone playing an organ at the bottom of a well. He proceeded to fishtail around the patio in time to the music, waving his hands over everyone before delving into a suspicious-looking tobacco tin. When his eyes alighted upon the detectives he beckoned them conspiratorially.
‘Come and meet Sir Winston,’ he said, holding a finger to his lips. ‘Mummy doesn’t like me going out during get-togethers but the weather may not hold up and it would be a shame not to give him a run. Follow me.’
He fairly tripped down the lawn, followed by the prancing pig Malacrida, and then dived behind a hedge.
‘Is he potty?’ asked Bryant as they headed after him.
‘The upper class gets away with calling it eccentric,’ said May. They rounded the corner and found themselves before a complete miniature railway station named Tavistock Halt. At its only platform stood an apple-green steam locomotive with brass trims and a single enclosed carriage.
‘I had Alberman fire up the old chap for us, just in case,’ Harry explained, heading for the driver’s seat. Malacrida ran ahead of him, bustling into her usual spot next to him. ‘I thought you’d be interested. Sir Winston was built in 1927, modelled on the Green Goddess at Hythe, although of course that’s a 381-mm gauge, and we couldn’t really compete. I was going to upgrade to a Krupps with a two-tone horn but they’re German-made and Mummy wouldn’t let me. All aboard.’
The detectives seated themselves behind Harry, who squeezed the release handle, opened the cylinder valve, blew the forward whistle in two short blasts and took off the horizontal brakes, moving the train smoothly out.
Sir Winston set off with a satisfying chug, past the flowerbeds towards the lake and its boathouse.
‘My grandfather had it built,’ his lordship called back. ‘We all loved riding it as children. They were going to put in other stations but – well, the war and everything.’
‘How long has Tavistock Hall been in your family’s hands?’ asked May through the billowing steam.
‘Oh, we’ve always been here. The present building’s only about a hundred and fifty years old but it shares its foundations with the earlier hall. Tradition has always held us back. Even the staff uniforms never changed. When I was a boy they still wore dinner livery of navy-blue tailcoats, breeches, white stockings and waistcoats. Keep your head in here, we’re going past some holly bushes.’ Branches scraped at the engine as it chuntered past. ‘The pater owned land from here to the coast and treated his tenants well. There were scandals, of course – there always are in the great houses of England – but the old man was adored. It was automatically assumed that I would continue the line. You never get to make decisions for yourself. Duty, and so on.’
The miniature train steamed around the edge of the illuminated lake, scattering ducks to the treeline. As it passed the tiny mock-Gothic boathouse the puffs of cotton-wool smoke that pulsed from the engine’s chimney completed the nostalgic scene.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ Harry shouted. ‘I’m sorry to see it go in a way. Grand country houses like Tavistock Hall were built on the availability of cheap servants. The Great War collapsed the domestic labour market and most of our land was sold off to pay bills. Let’s pull in here for a second.’
He tugged on the brake, leaving the engine to idle, and turned to face them, leaning on the back of his red leather seat. ‘I feel I can talk to you. You seem different from the others somehow.’
‘I think we can agree on that,’ said Bryant.
‘I know what you’re probably thinking, that I’m the bad son foolishly frittering away his legacy, but you know what my father and grandfather did back there?’ He pointed up to the shadowed house. ‘They held dinners for twenty in the Lavender Room, complete with their dogs and cats and monkeys and mistresses. They had seven indoor servants and four outdoor ones, including one whose sole duty was to clean their hunting kit. Their women redecorated constantly. They dyed the doves in different colours and held baroque masked balls in the Venetian style. They invited the Astors and the Mitfords, Wallis Simpson and Cecil Beaton, who once came disguised as a field of rabbits. They held costume balls and dressed as Beau Brummel and Lady Caroline Lamb, and shot so many partridges that the estate had to be restocked with imported fowl. And when the villagers complained about the rents or the e
nclosed common land, they raised the levies to pay for more grand parties.’
Harry seemed intent on confirming Bryant’s worst fears about the aristocracy, but there was something boyish and doomed about his honesty. He stroked Malacrida’s head absently and rearranged her necklace. ‘We’re quite useless, you see. We’re flightless birds. We were never bred for survival, and when the waterhole shrank we intermarried until half the family had to be locked away. We could manage to feed and clothe ourselves so long as we were within reach of a bell-pull, but that’s about all. Most of our servants were given the names of their predecessors so that we wouldn’t have to remember who they were, and they all had to be shorter than my grandfather, who did not wish anyone to stand above him. Father would come down and tap the barometer, pat his dogs, eat his breakfast and shoot his grouse, and if the guests bored him, which they always did, he would head off to the village pub and not return until everyone had left. His kind were hanging on to their estates by the skin of their teeth until one by one …’ He gave a deep and melancholy sigh. ‘Let’s head back.’
The train completed its circuit, chugging steadily towards the moonlit hall once more.
Nobody appeared to have noticed their absence except the lawyer.
‘I suppose Lord Banks-Marion was telling you his side of the story,’ said Toby Stafford as they re-entered Lupin. He steered them across the room, keen not to be overheard. ‘Did he tell you that after his father died he set off on a voyage of self-discovery?’
‘No,’ said May. ‘Where to?’
‘Where do you think? India, of course. Along the way he discovered marijuana and LSD. Came back from Goa with a couple of fashionable accessories, an annoying flower-child girlfriend and a maharishi. I don’t suppose you saw the ashram he’s set up in the walled garden – the train doesn’t go through there. Take a walk around the back of the house tomorrow morning. You won’t be able to miss it. He says it’s a peace camp. It’s a shanty town, litter and filth everywhere, a reeking dosshouse of camouflage tents for every finger-bell-waving pot-smoking cloudhead in the county. No wonder his pet pig feels at home there.’
Hall of Mirrors Page 10