Death of a Wedding Guest

by Anne Morice

  3

  The hall felt cool and amazingly peaceful after the stuffy hubbub of the marquee and I was quite content to sit listening to the Ropers’ number endlessly ringing away in my ear, long after I had abandoned hope of its being answered. The monotonous brr brr at the other end had a pleasantly soporific effect and I was only jolted out of a near torpor by the sight of Ellen’s red leather address book.

  It was lying on a chair just inside the front door and a pile of cards and letters had been pushed in between the cover and the top page. Jez had evidently deposited it there in one of her more haphazard moments, for several of the cards had slithered half way out and one or two of them had fallen on the floor.

  I put the receiver back, walked over to the chair, replaced all the correspondence inside the book and took it up to Ellen’s room. I was not indifferent to Alison’s sufferings, but, since a minimum of five minutes would have to elapse before I should know whether Phil had not answered the telephone because he felt disinclined to, or because he had already started on the return journey, it was a question of putting the interval to some useful account.

  Ellen’s overnight bag was packed and ready, but had been left open for last-minute additions and, having placed the address book on top, I used up another two minutes on repairs to my face before slowly descending to the hall again. Good timing too, for as I reached the front door I saw Phil walking up the garden path, carrying a green and white plastic bag from the supermarket.

  ‘You’ve certainly taken your time,’ I remarked, and he first flushed and scowled at me as though I had accused him of rape and incest and then rapidly climbed down by saying:

  ‘I’m awfully sorry. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Well, don’t bother to apologise to me. Save it for your mother. She’s on the point of explosion.’

  ‘Yes, I expect I’ll get a rocket,’ he said sulkily, ‘but how can I help it if she insists on wearing shoes she’s had in her wardrobe for about ten years? I offered to chip in for a new pair, but she wouldn’t let me. And it took ages to find her other black ones. She said they were in the hall cupboard but they weren’t. I had to go looking all through her bedroom and then, just as I was leaving, the telephone rang, so I had to go back indoors and answer it and by the time I got there whoever it was had rung off.’

  Rather to my embarrassment, all this was related on a rising note of self-pity and ended with Phil’s rubbing his eye, as though some grit had lodged in it. It made me understand why Alison worried herself to death about his being so unhappy, but I could not help wondering whether her ceaseless jollying and nagging had not contributed, even more than Ellen’s faithlessness, to making him so spineless and whether attendance at Reading University, enabling him to spend every weekend with his old Mum, had been such a sound idea, after all.

  ‘Never mind, you’re here now, which is all that matters. So do come on, then,’ I added impatiently as he still lingered, mulishly looking back over his shoulder. ‘We don’t want to waste any more time.’

  ‘I was wondering where that waiter had got to,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Back to his post, presumably. Do hurry up!’

  ‘There’s something funny about him, if you ask me,’ Phil said, reluctantly falling into step and moving forward at last. ‘He keeps bobbing up and then disappearing again.’

  ‘Oh really? Well, that’s his business, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I think he’s up to something, in case you’re interested.’

  I was not at all interested, but, thinking it might help Phil to forget his own troubles, I made enquiring noises.

  ‘He was out there on the common when I started off to fetch Mum’s shoes, and I saw him getting into one of the cars. When I came back just now, there he was on the common.’

  ‘Well, I never!’

  ‘And he had a moustache.’

  ‘Probably the Croker boy up to his tricks. No, no, that was only a joke,’ I added hastily as Phil stopped in his tracks again. ‘What I meant to say was: Why shouldn’t he have a moustache? He’s probably Italian.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. He didn’t have a moustache the first time I saw him and the second time he did. I think you’re right about its being someone playing a trick. I don’t believe he’s a waiter at all.’

  We had come to within a few paces of the marquee by this time and the hum of talk and laughter from the dim interior had risen to a sustained roar.

  ‘Either that,’ I said loudly, ‘or what you saw were two separate waiters. Probably one of them owns a car and they all take it in turns to nip out there for a smoke. Look, there’s your mother, over on the right. She’s looking pretty desperate, so you’d better run along and put her out of her misery.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Phil said, with a return to the surly manner. ‘Only don’t blame me if you get back to the house this evening and find all the silver’s been pinched.’

  4

  The operation had been completed only in the nick of time, for it was now two-fifteen and I knew that the toasts and cake-cutting ceremony were scheduled to start at two-thirty, Ellen and Jeremy having planned to leave as soon as they were over, so as to be on the road by three o’clock.

  In preparation for this climax, several waiters were already making a tour of the marquee refilling champagne glasses, while another was engaged in opening bottles in the bucket on the central table. I gave particular attention to each of them and was rewarded with the useless information that two had moustaches, while the rest did not. There remained one more, still at his post behind the buffet table, also clean-shaven, and I went up to him, meaning to ask if the full roster was present and correct. However, before I could speak he raised his eyebrows at me in a despairing fashion and pointed along the table to his right. This was the spot where Irene had been giving her all to Robert or Edward and it was now occupied by Caspar, his chin just level with the table’s edge and an expression of fierce concentration on his pallid face. There were half a dozen plates containing the remainders of assorted canapes within reach of his frail but purposeful little hands and he was using them to brush up for his next I.Q. test, setting each square morsel out on the tablecloth and matching it up with its fellows. He had reached the stage where all the caviar was in one straight row at the top and all the smoked salmon, like the thin red line gallantly opposing the Zulus, just below it. He was currently at work on the prawns, which was an exciting stage in the game for it looked as though they might end by forming the longest line of all, though clearly the anchovy and egg would be close runners-up.

  I found myself becoming quite engrossed by the exercise but had my attention abruptly wrenched away by Simon coming up from the rear and giving me a brisk pat on the shoulder.

  ‘I have to start my speech in a minute. Got any professional tips?’

  ‘Just remember to breathe,’ I advised him. ‘Keep your voice up and take it slowly. Anyway, I was given to understand that your part had been cut to a couple of rhubarbs?’

  ‘Those were my instructions, but I regard them as flexible. I don’t want to disappoint my audience and if I cut it too short it will all be over before they realise I’ve begun. I thought that once I’d got their attention with a joke or two, I’d raise my glass to the young couple, wish them long life and happiness and bid them go forward together, hand in hand, to create a better moral climate in this great country of ours. Or words to that effect. How does it strike you?’

  ‘I should think it would do very nicely.’

  ‘Right, then I rely on you to lead off with the “Hear hears” and “Bravos”.’

  ‘There is something I should perhaps do for you before that, Simon. Part of your audience is still out in the garden. Shouldn’t I go and round them up?’

  ‘Good thinking! I should appreciate it enormously. And I’ve met your husband, by the way. Fine figure of a man. It has given me second thoughts about inviting you to dinner this evening.’

  Jez was still holding court in the gar
den, the number of people surrounding her having more than doubled. Several extra tables had been brought up and placed beside hers and the party now included Robert or Edward, as well as the two elder bridesmaids, but unfortunately not Phil. She had a knack of forming a party within a party wherever she went and I knew that it would only be necessary for me to invite her to accompany me into the marquee for all the rest to follow, like a flock of flamingos taking off in the sunset.

  ‘You are wanted inside,’ I told her. ‘The climax is approaching and Caspar needs a wipe down.’

  Her face fell and she stood up with most untypical haste.

  ‘Is he all right? Has anything happened to him?’ she asked, displaying a degree of maternal solicitude I had not known her to possess.

  ‘Of course he’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tess. It’s just that I felt the most sinister vibrations when you said that. It’s strange because normally yours are very harmonious.’

  ‘Not necessarily when I’ve been drinking champagne on a hot afternoon, though.’

  Despite her dedication to her calling, Jez always took teasing with the utmost good humour and she smiled at once and said,

  ‘Too right. Let us weave our halting way inside and see what the little man is up to.’

  The action had moved forward during this three-minute interval and all glasses were now filled and at the ready. Everyone, including Alison, was standing and eight of the nine principals had moved into position round two sides of the central table. Simon was at the top and narrower end, nearest to his audience, and next to him Jeremy who had Ellen on his other side. At right angles to them, Irene, swaying a little, was at the head of the longer line, looking flushed and about ten years older than at the start of the festivities. Her make-up had wilted under the onslaught of heat and fatigue, not to mention a steady intake of scotch and, as though aware of the damage, she had concealed the upper half of her face behind enormous sun glasses.

  Arnold stood just below her, beaming and waving his pale, pudgy hand at anyone who caught his eye, with Stella looming beside him as cool, stern and immaculate as ever. Next came Robin and after him Toby who signalled to me, in a somewhat despairing way, to come over and protect his other flank. I did so, placing myself round the corner at the foot of the table, behind the only unclaimed glass and directly facing the three at the top.

  Caspar had edged himself as close as possible to this scene and was observing it with an inscrutable expression which barely quivered when Jez scooped him up under her arm and sauntered back into the crowd of onlookers. All was now hushed and expectant and Simon held up his hand like a policeman on point duty, then winked at me and began:

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I crave your attention, please?’

  Anyone who knew Irene might, I dare say, have foreseen what occurred next, yet I guessed that even Toby was taken aback. Every eye was on Simon, now filling his lungs for the second time and, with exact and perfect timing, she piped up:

  ‘Before you begin, I wonder if someone would be kind enough to find me a chair?’

  There was a moment of stupefied blankness, the first sign of movement coming from the waiters, now ranged together at the back of the marquee by the buffet table and appearing considerably more numerous than had been the case when they were all flitting around as individuals. Two of them had now detached themselves and were approaching but, apart from this and from assuming alert and obliging expressions, there was nothing they could do to alleviate the situation, being separated from all the available chairs by a closely packed throng of guests. In the meantime, though, there had been a rustle of activity among this faction too and people were edging aside and pushing into each other to make way for Phil, coming through from the back and audibly cheered on by his mother with a chair held high above his head.

  ‘I am so terribly sorry to be such a bother,’ Irene said, speaking now with vastly overdone humility, ‘but I’m not feeling frightfully well and it would be so awful if I were to spoil things for everybody by fainting. Do please forgive me for making such a fuss, but it’s so dreadfully hot in here, isn’t it?’

  There followed a rather ludicrous skirmish, in which Phil, having reached the table, showed every indication of intending to pass the chair over the top of it, realising a second or two later than the rest of us that in doing so he was liable to wreck the top tier of the wedding cake, and remaining fixed like a statue, while the chair wobbled in his grasp. Simon leapt into the breach, reaching up to steady the chair with one hand, while with the other he gestured to Phil to pass it round behind him to the waiter who stood with outstretched hands to receive it at the other end. This of course meant putting the urn of flowers at risk and, although everyone in his passage backed away to allow Phil a clear space, he still managed to catch a chair leg in the trailing stems of an orchid and then, scarlet in the face with embarrassment, to tug it away too sharply so that for a breathless moment we all watched horrified as the whole magnificent edifice swayed gently back and forth on its base.

  Ellen gave a slight scream, which could have stemmed from either laughter or exasperation; Simon, moving like a snake, somehow got both hands on the urn to steady it, and Phil made the final plunge through to safety, banging the chair down beside Irene with such force that he lost his balance and all but collapsed on to it himself. If she had sat up all night planning the details, which she may have done for all I know, she could not have hit upon a neater way of disrupting the party and causing acute embarrassment to all present.

  Naturally order was not immediately restored and Irene even managed to create a little extra confusion by sinking down on the chair in an exhausted fashion and then making a big production number over being unable to find her bag, although she could scarcely have seen it through the black glasses if it had been propped up on the table in front of her.

  A little more scuffling around ensued before the bag was restored to her, whereupon she smiled apologetically in the direction of Simon, at the same time opening it and fishing out a tiny silver box. Turning his back on her, Simon raised his glass and addressed the audience: ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he said in a quiet, almost conversational tone, ‘I give you the bride and bridegroom! May they always enjoy happiness and peace!’ he added, laying a slight emphasis on the last word.

  A hundred glasses were raised and, as the murmur of a hundred voices repeating the toast died away, Irene shot her last bolt. She tilted her glass, took a deep and thirsty draught, then, gasping and spluttering, made a move to set it down on the table, misjudging the distance, so that it tipped over and fell on to the ground. Clutching her stomach, she let out a piercing scream:

  ‘My God, someone’s mixed champagne in my . . .’

  She began to choke and a moment later swayed forward, before toppling sideways on to the grass.

  5

  Robin was the first to reach her, dropping on to his knees and simultaneously pushing the chair aside to provide more space. The glass had rolled underneath and he instinctively stretched out his hand towards it, but there were now not less than five pairs of feet curvetting around and one of them stepped on the glass and crushed it into the ground, although he had no way of telling whether this had been done deliberately, still less of identifying the owner of the foot in question. On reflection, he was inclined to rule out Arnold, since his memory of the incident remained clear enough to suggest that it had belonged to a much larger man.

  ‘Stand back everyone, please!’ he called, getting up and doing so himself. ‘I think she’s fainted and we need all the air we can get. Is one of you a doctor, by any chance?’ he went on, in a slight variation of the time honoured question.

  A small, pale and bespectacled man pushed his way through from the back and advanced to the table. He was dressed like all the others in grey morning coat, but Robin had no need to ask for credentials, for his name was Dr Macintosh and he practised in Stadhampton. He had been in regular attendance on the
Crichton household ever since they moved to Roakes and, being almost as confirmed a hypochondriac as Toby, it would have been hard for an onlooker to guess, during one of their frequent consultations, which one of them was treating the other.

  ‘I haven’t got my bag of tricks with me,’ he explained. ‘But if she’s fainted the best thing would be to move her out to the garden.’

  Robin shook his head very slightly and, interpreting this almost imperceptible movement correctly, Dr Macintosh cocked an eye at him and then moved rapidly round to the other side of the table, passing behind Ellen and giving her shoulder a pat as he went by. She was the only one of us who had not moved from her place and she neither acknowledged Dr Macintosh’s comforting little gesture, nor turned her head as he crouched down beside Irene, and this unusual reaction, combined with a curious stiffness in her attitude, prompted me to observe her more intently. She was staring straight ahead of her, with a wary, puzzled expression on her face and as I watched she stretched out her hand, whipped up one of the three glasses on her end of the table and emptied the contents on to the ground.

  Meanwhile a muttered exchange had passed between Robin and the doctor, at the end of which Robin detached himself and came down the table to speak to Toby and me.

  ‘I’m going to telephone for an ambulance and I think the best thing, Toby, would be to try and get everyone to leave as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is it serious?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s in a bad way, I’m afraid. Looks like a heart attack, but there’s no need to go into details. Just say she’s been taken ill, but whatever happens get it through to them that the party’s over.’