all the unsavoury trappings the moment I landed at the University of Oxford. It doesn’t do to sound anything but English at Oxford, you know.’
‘Randall has a talent for divesting himself of trappings, don’t you, darling?’ said Claudia rather sharply.
‘What? Oh!’ Kimpton looked unhappy. His demeanour had completely changed. So had hers, for that matter. She stared at him as might a schoolteacher at a disobedient pupil, apparently waiting for him to speak. Finally he said quietly, ‘Dearest one, do not break my heart by reminding me of my most reprehensible mistake. Gentlemen, I was once, momentarily, foolish enough—having gone to great lengths to persuade this extraordinary woman to become my wife—I was foolish enough to doubt my own wishes and—’
‘Nobody is interested in your regrets and recriminations, Randall,’ Claudia said, cutting him off. ‘Apart from me—I never tire of hearing of them. And I warn you, you will need to reproach yourself a good deal more in my presence before I agree to set a wedding date.’
‘Dearest one, I shall do nothing but reproach, accuse and vilify myself from now until the day I die!’ Kimpton said earnestly, eyes flaring. The two of them might have forgotten entirely that Poirot and I were there.
‘Good. Then I see no immediate need to divest myself of you.’ Claudia smiled suddenly, as if she had only ever been teasing him.
Kimpton seemed to inflate with confidence once again. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘A wedding date will be set, my dearest one—and soon!’
‘Will it, indeed?’ Claudia laughed merrily. ‘We shall see about that. In any case, I admire your determination. There is no other man on earth who could win me over twice. Or, probably, even once.’
‘No other man would be as obsessed or devoted as I, my divine dearest one.’
‘That I can believe,’ said Claudia. ‘I did not imagine I could ever be induced to wear this ring again, yet here I am, wearing it.’ She took a moment to examine the large diamond on the third finger of her left hand.
I thought I heard her sigh then, but the sound was masked by that of the door opening a third time. A young maid stood in the doorway. Her fair hair was arranged in a bun that she patted nervously as she spoke. ‘I’m to prepare the room for drinks,’ she muttered.
Claudia Playford leaned towards me and Poirot and said in a loud whisper, ‘Make sure to sniff before you drink. Phyllis is as scatter-witted as they come. I can’t imagine why we still have her. She wouldn’t know the difference between port and bathwater.’
A phenomenon I have had cause to notice time and again in both my professional and my social life is that when one meets a large group of people all at once, one somehow knows—as if by otherworldly instinct—which of them one will enjoy speaking to and which are worth avoiding.
So it was that when I returned, after dressing for dinner, to a drawing room full of many more people, I knew instantly that I should endeavour to end up standing next to the lawyer Poirot had described to me, Michael Gathercole. He was taller than even the average tall man, and stood slightly stooped as if to minimize his height.
Poirot was quite right: Gathercole did indeed look as if his physical self was a cause of discomfort to him. His arms hung restlessly by his sides, and each time he moved even slightly, it looked as if he was trying rather clumsily and impatiently to shake something off—something unfortunate that had attached itself to him, but that no one else could see.
He was not handsome in the usual sense of the word. His face made me think of a faithful dog that had been kicked too often by its owner and was certain it would happen again. All the same, he looked by far the cleverest of my new acquaintances.
The other newcomers to the drawing room were also as Poirot had advertised, more or less. Lady Playford was telling a complicated anecdote to nobody in particular as she entered. She made as imposing an impression as I had expected, with a loud, melodic voice and her hair in a sort of coiled leaning tower. After her came the planet-sized lawyer, Orville Rolfe; then Viscount Harry Playford, a blond-haired young man with a flat, square face and an amiable if distant smile—as if he had felt chipper about something once and had been trying ever since to recollect the cause of his good cheer. His wife Dorro was a tall woman with features that brought to mind a bird of prey and a long neck with a deep hollow at its base. One could have set down a teacup in that hollow and it would have nestled there quite satisfactorily.
The last two to arrive for drinks were Joseph Scotcher, Lady Playford’s secretary, and a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. I assumed she was the nurse, Sophie Bourlet, for she had pushed Scotcher into the room in a wheelchair. She had a kindly smile that looked, at the same time, efficient—as if she had decided that a smile of this exact sort would be suitable for the occasion—and a modest manner. Of everyone in the room, she was the one to whom one might go with a practical problem. She carried a bundle of papers under one arm, I noticed, and as soon as she had the chance, she put them down on a small writing desk by one of the windows. Having done so, she approached Lady Playford and said something to her. Lady Playford looked over at the papers on the desk and nodded.
I wondered if, in the face of Scotcher’s declining vigour, Sophie had taken over some of the secretarial duties at Lillieoak. She was dressed more like a secretary than a nurse. All the other women wore evening gowns, but Sophie looked as if she had dressed smartly for a meeting at the office.
Scotcher was as light, in his physical appearance, as his nurse was dark. His hair was the colour of spun gold, and his skin was pale. He had delicate features, almost like a girl’s, and looked dangerously thin: a fading angel. I wondered if he had been sturdier before his health failed.
I managed to put myself in front of Gathercole reasonably swiftly, and the usual introductions followed. He turned out to be friendlier than he had looked from a distance. He told me he had first discovered Athelinda Playford’s Shrimp Seddon books in the orphanage that had housed him for most of his childhood, and that he was now her lawyer. He spoke of her with admiration and a little awe.
‘You are evidently extremely fond of her,’ I remarked at one point and he replied, ‘Everybody is who has read her work. She is, I believe, a genius.’
I thought about the profoundly unconvincing Sergeant Halfwit and Inspector Imbecile, and decided it would be injudicious to criticize the creative efforts of my host when she was standing only a few feet away.
‘A lot of the big houses belonging to English families were burnt to the ground in the recent … unpleasant business over here.’
I nodded. It was not something that an Englishman at the beginning of a week’s holiday in Clonakilty cared to discuss.
‘No one came near Lillieoak,’ said Gathercole. ‘Lady Playford’s books are so well loved that even the lawless hordes could not bring themselves to attack her home—or else they were restrained by those better than themselves, to whom the name Athelinda Playford means something.’
This sounded unlikely to me. What lawless horde, after all, would cancel its plans to wreak havoc on account of Shrimp Seddon and her fictional chums? Was young Shrimp really so influential? Could her fat, long-haired dog, Anita, bring a smile to the face of an angry rebel and make him forget all about the cause? I doubted it.
‘I see you are unconvinced,’ said Gathercole. ‘What you forget is that people fall for Lady Playford’s books as children. That sort of attachment is difficult, later, to talk yourself out of, no matter what your political affiliation might be.’
He spoke as an orphan, I reminded myself; Shrimp Seddon and her gang were probably the closest thing he had had to a family.
An