been three times to the lodge gates and back, wearing a mackintosh over my clothes,’ Jeremy explained as he fell heavily onto the sofa. ‘Apparently the Herzoslovakian Minister did it in four minutes fifty-three seconds, weighed down by his mackintosh. I went all out, but I couldn’t do any better than six minutes ten seconds. And I don’t believe he did, either. Only Chris Chataway himself could do it in that time, with or without a mackintosh.’
‘Who told you that about the Herzoslovakian Minister?’ Sir Rowland enquired.
‘Clarissa.’
‘Clarissa!’ exclaimed Sir Rowland, chuckling.
‘Oh, Clarissa.’ Hugo snorted. ‘You shouldn’t pay any attention to what Clarissa tells you.’
Still chuckling, Sir Rowland continued, ‘I’m afraid you don’t know your hostess very well, Warrender. She’s a young lady with a very vivid imagination.’
Jeremy rose to his feet. ‘Do you mean she made the whole thing up?’ he asked, indignantly.
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it past her,’ Sir Rowland answered as he handed one of the three glasses to the still blindfolded Hugo. ‘And it certainly sounds like her idea of a joke.’
‘Does it, indeed? You just wait till I see that young woman,’ Jeremy promised. ‘I’ll certainly have something to say to her. Gosh, I’m exhausted.’ He stalked out to the hall carrying his raincoat.
‘Stop puffing like a walrus,’ Hugo complained. ‘I’m trying to concentrate. There’s a fiver at stake. Roly and I have got a bet on.’
‘Oh, what is it?’ Jeremy enquired, returning to perch on an arm of the sofa.
‘It’s to decide who’s the best judge of port,’ Hugo told him. ‘We’ve got Cockburn ’twenty-seven, Dow ’forty-two, and the local grocer’s special. Quiet now. This is important.’ He sipped from the glass he was holding, and then murmured rather non-committally, ‘Mmm-ah.’
‘Well?’ Sir Roland queried. ‘Have you decided what the first one is?’
‘Don’t hustle me, Roly,’ Hugo exclaimed. ‘I’m not going to rush my fences. Where’s the next one?’
He held on to the glass as he was handed another. He sipped and then announced, ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure about those two.’ He sniffed at both glasses again. ‘This first one’s the Dow,’ he decided as he held out one glass. ‘The second was the Cockburn,’ he continued, handing the other glass back as Sir Rowland repeated, ‘Number three glass the Dow, number one the Cockburn’, writing as he spoke.
‘Well, it’s hardly necessary to taste the third,’ Hugo declared, ‘but I suppose I’d better go through with it.’
‘Here you are,’ said Sir Rowland, handing over the final glass.
After sipping from it, Hugo made an exclamation of extreme distaste. ‘Tschah! Ugh! What unspeakable muck.’ He returned the glass to Sir Rowland, then took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips to get rid of the offending taste. ‘It’ll take me an hour to get the taste of that stuff out of my mouth,’ he complained. ‘Get me out of this, Roly.’
‘Here, I’ll do it,’ Jeremy offered, rising and moving behind Hugo to remove his blindfold while Sir Rowland thoughtfully sipped the last of the three glasses before putting it back on the table.
‘So that’s what you think, Hugo, is it? Glass number two, grocer’s special?’ He shook his head. ‘Rubbish! That’s the Dow ’forty-two, not a doubt of it.’
Hugo put the blindfold in his pocket. ‘Pah! You’ve lost your palate, Roly,’ he declared.
‘Let me try,’ Jeremy suggested. Going to the table, he took a quick sip from each glass. He paused for a moment, sipped each of them again, and then admitted, ‘Well, they all taste the same to me.’
‘You young people!’ Hugo admonished him. ‘It’s all this confounded gin you keep on drinking. Completely ruins your palate. It’s not just women who don’t appreciate port. Nowadays, no man under forty does, either.’
Before Jeremy had a chance to reply to this, the door leading to the library opened, and Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, a beautiful dark-haired woman in her late twenties, entered. ‘Hello, my darlings,’ she greeted Sir Rowland and Hugo. ‘Have you settled it yet?’
‘Yes, Clarissa,’ Sir Rowland assured her. ‘We’re ready for you.’
‘I know I’m right,’ said Hugo. ‘Number one’s the Cockburn, number two’s the port-type stuff, and three’s the Dow. Right?’
‘Nonsense,’ Sir Rowland exclaimed before Clarissa could answer. ‘Number one’s the Dow, two’s the Cockburn, and three’s the port-type stuff. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘Darlings!’ was Clarissa’s only immediate response. She kissed first Hugo and then Sir Rowland, and continued, ‘Now one of you take the tray back to the dining-room. You’ll find the decanter on the sideboard.’ Smiling to herself, she selected a chocolate from a box on an occasional table.
Sir Rowland had picked up the tray with the glasses on it, and was about to leave with them. He stopped. ‘The decanter?’ he asked, warily.
Clarissa sat on the sofa, tucking her feet up under her. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Just one decanter.’ She giggled. ‘It’s all the same port, you know.’
Clarissa’s announcement produced a different reaction from each of her hearers. Jeremy burst into hoots of laughter, went across to his hostess and kissed her, while Sir Rowland stood gaping with astonishment, and Hugo seemed undecided what attitude to adopt to her having made fools of them both.
When Sir Rowland finally found words, they were, ‘Clarissa, you unprincipled humbug.’ But his tone was affectionate.
‘Well,’ Clarissa responded, ‘it’s been such a wet afternoon, and you weren’t able to play golf. You must have some fun, and you have had fun over this, darlings, haven’t you?’
‘Upon my soul,’ Sir Rowland exclaimed as he carried the tray to the door. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, showing up your elders and betters. It turns out that only young Warrender here guessed they were all the same.’
Hugo, who by now was laughing, accompanied him to the door. ‘Who was it?’ he asked, putting an arm around Sir Rowland’s shoulder, ‘Who was it who said that he’d know Cockburn ’twenty-seven anywhere?’
‘Never mind, Hugo,’ Sir Rowland replied resignedly, ‘let’s have some more of it later, whatever it is.’ Talking as they went, the two men left by the door leading to the hall, Hugo closing the door behind them.
Jeremy confronted Clarissa on her sofa. ‘Now then, Clarissa,’ he said accusingly, ‘what’s all this about the Herzoslovakian Minister?’
Clarissa looked at him innocently. ‘What about him?’ she asked.
Pointing a finger at her, Jeremy spoke clearly and slowly. ‘Did he ever run to the lodge gates and back, in a mackintosh, three times in four minutes fifty-three seconds?’
Clarissa smiled sweetly as she replied, ‘The Herzoslovakian Minister is a dear, but he’s well over sixty, and I doubt very much if he’s run anywhere for years.’
‘So you did make the whole thing up. They told me you probably did. But why?’
‘Well,’ Clarissa suggested, her smile even sweeter than before, ‘you’d been complaining all day about not getting enough exercise. So I thought the only friendly thing to do was to help you get some. It would have been no good ordering you to go for a brisk run through the woods,