Murder by Mistake (12 page)

Ellie set her teeth. ‘I am not prepared to clear these rooms of furniture; in fact, most of the items are too large and fragile to shift. I suggest you downsize to a buffet supper, served in the dining room, and forget the disco. I am hosting another wedding party earlier in the day for a buffet lunch. We are dismantling the dining room table this afternoon and storing it down the corridor, and bringing in a number of small tables and a lot of chairs. I imagine that arrangement may serve for the evening event as well. After supper they can all go home.’

He swelled like a toad. ‘I do not arrange such makeshift affairs. First Slave!’ He turned on his luckless girl assistant. ‘Get the client on the phone.’

The front door bell pealed again. Rose shot out of the kitchen and opened the door to let in a middle-aged woman with a brutal haircut and a dress sense that her daughter Ursula must often have deplored. Colour and shape all wrong, wrong, wrong.

Ellie stifled a moan.

Mrs Belton was not amused to find the hall full of people. ‘Mrs Quicke, I’ve come to check on the arrangements for my daughter’s wedding, and I don’t understand—’

‘I was asked to be here at eleven,’ said the Party Planner, beaming charm down upon her – to no avail.

‘Did I ask you to explain yourself?’ said the middle-aged woman with the bad haircut. The Party Planner gaped. Mrs Belton had a commanding presence, which was about the only thing her daughter Ursula seemed to have inherited from her.

Mrs Belton turned to Ellie. ‘May I ask what is going on here? My daughter told me I had no need to fuss, but naturally a mother wishes to be involved. Of course if I had
my
way, the reception would have been held in a hotel, which would have been far more suitable, but—’

Ellie held up her hands. ‘Mrs Belton, Mr . . . er. We need to talk. Mrs Belton, I offered to hold a small reception for your daughter here in this house next Saturday. Unfortunately, my own daughter Diana, without consulting me, appears to have arranged to hold her own wedding reception for a much larger number of people here that very same day. I have no idea how this can be managed.’

She turned to the portly Party Planner. ‘You’ve seen the rooms and understand the problems. May I leave you to produce a solution while I show Mrs Belton around?’

EIGHT

E
llie ushered Mrs Belton into the dining room, and shut the door behind them. ‘This is where we’ll set up the buffet. For thirty people, right?’

Mrs Belton was displeased to find Stewart on the phone and papers littering the table. ‘This is an office, not at all suitable for a buffet lunch.’

‘As the Queen said about Buckingham Palace, this is a working institution, not a show house,’ said Ellie. And to Stewart, ‘You’ll let me know if you come up with anything?’

Stewart nodded, making notes on a pad as he listened on his phone. Ellie explained to Mrs Belton how the room would be rearranged for Ursula’s reception. Returning to the hall, she found the Party Planner deep in converse with his cohorts. Ellie ignored them all to lead Mrs Belton through into the sitting room at the back of the house. She closed that door behind her, as well.

‘The drawing room. We thought we would take out the smaller pieces of furniture and put in some extra chairs. Ursula has booked a caterer, who will be responsible for the drinks and the service. She’s also arranged matters with the florist, and has a friend who is to take the photographs. All I’ve done is organize a cleaning agency to help move some of the furniture beforehand and to clear up afterwards.’

‘A poor sort of do.’

Restraining herself with some difficulty from hitting Mrs Belton, Ellie opened the French windows on to the garden and led her visitor out that way. ‘We might spill over into the garden if the weather is fine.’

‘If she’d followed my advice and gone to a hotel, she could have doubled the numbers, and then I might have been able to invite some of my colleagues from work.’

Ellie knew that Ursula had wanted only a small, family wedding, so didn’t reply. She opened the doors into the conservatory. ‘We thought we could have the photographs in here. We will, of course, lend Ursula a bedroom in which she and her new husband can change into their going away outfits.’

Mrs Belton sniffed. ‘It seems a paltry affair to me. Those people out there in the hall . . . Who are they? At my friend’s daughter’s wedding – a very upmarket affair I might add – there was seating for a hundred and twenty with a proper dance afterwards. They had a top florist, too. Superb arrangements. Now that’s the style of things I expected for my daughter.’

‘Yes, but she wanted—’

‘She’s made her own dress, if you please, and insists on having that poor girl Mia for her bridesmaid, though I told her that her cousin would expect to be bridesmaid and would really look the part, but would she listen? No, she wouldn’t. She’s far too fond of having her own way, and I don’t envy her husband if he thinks to rule the roost.’

‘I’m sure that—’

‘Ursula tells me I need worry about nothing but turning up on the day looking nice, and that is all very well, but how does she know the way these things should be done? Has she made preparation for pieces of wedding cake to be sent out afterwards, for instance? Who is printing the order of service? What provision has been made for taking care of the wedding presents which will no doubt be brought here on the day?’

‘No doubt she’s thought of those things, too. She knows how hard you work, and she wants to spare you as much trouble as possible.’

Mrs Belton had been born discontented. ‘If his people are so keen to pay for the reception, they might at least have done it in style.’

The words, ‘You ungrateful cow!’ sprang to Ellie’s tongue. She swallowed them with difficulty. She even managed a smile as she said, ‘Ursula didn’t want a big splash. She wanted a small family “do”. Something intimate, with only her best friends and family around her.’

She thought of the long talks Thomas had had with the young couple, during which they’d explored all the problems they might face in their new life. They’d told him they wanted to make their commitment to one another before God in church. She thought of Ursula making time to see Mia, in the middle of her important job interviews and the preparations for her wedding. She thought of the love and trust between the couple. If anyone was going to start their new life off the right way, these two would.

Mrs Belton sniffed. ‘Well, all I can say is, I’ve been almost ashamed to send invitations to my dearest friends.’

‘Console yourself,’ said Ellie, leading the way out, ‘she’ll make a beautiful bride.’

Surprisingly, the hall was empty of people. Ah, but out of the dining room came the leaves of the long table, hoisted aloft by two burly men, and behind them came not one but two of the cleaning team, carrying another leaf between them. They disappeared down the corridor. Ellie hoped they’d remember not to put anything in Thomas’s room, but hadn’t time to check.

As Ellie showed Mrs Belton out of the house, Stewart appeared in the dining room doorway. Ellie brushed one hand against the other. ‘Phew! Peace at last. Sorry about that, Stewart.’

‘They’ve left me a couple of chairs, but I’ve been warned they’re next to go. The Party Planner is in there –’ he indicated the sitting room – ‘waiting to speak to you. Before I go, I must tell you there are only two Summers in the Ealing phone book. One lives in that road just above Oak Tree Lane. The other’s in one of those flats on Eaton Rise. I rang both. One is a man in his eighties, who thought I was his carer coming to put him to bed – very confused as to the time of day. The other answered the phone to a background of children screaming. I made up a story quickly, asked if she were the Mrs Summers my mother used to know, and she said she didn’t think so. She apologized for the noise, said she was looking after some children for the day.’

‘A childminder? Denis has four children, but they’re surely a bit old for child-minding?’

‘Agreed. I underlined the name and address in the phone book. It’s too late to do it today, but I’ll get on to the bank first thing tomorrow about her cheque and let you know the result. And now, if you don’t mind, I promised to take the family out to Kew for a picnic this afternoon.’

Ellie said, ‘Go, man, go!’ He laughed and escaped.

The door to the sitting room opened, and the Party Planner beckoned her in. ‘A word, Mrs Quicke?’ He was shaking his head. ‘I am considered the very best in the business at solving problems, but here we are faced with a veritable mountain of troubles.

‘One: Diana’s caterer insists she was asked to provide a sit down meal for fifty, and she either cannot or will not alter the menu at such short notice. So, if you wish to change it, you will be charged the full amount for a set meal with three wines and champagne, plus the amount she must charge per head if you downgrade to a buffet. She requires access at noon on the day of the event, so that her staff can lay the tables with all the appropriate silverware and decorate with balloons, party favours and so on.

‘Next: the florist has already designed displays for the hall, the dining room and the drawing room, to complement the bride’s bouquet. These displays are somewhat larger than usual, if I may say so, but the client has agreed the designs and the flowers have already been ordered.

‘Third: the wine merchant requires refrigerated space for his stock, plus ice. Two hundred bottles to start with. And a secure bar from which to serve drinks throughout the evening.

‘Fourth: the photographer wants a good half hour to take his still pictures, while his assistant will of course be making a video of the event from first to last. This means the caterer must set back the hour of the evening meal by that amount of time, which she refuses to do.

‘Fifth: the wedding cake must have a suitably strong table to stand on, and we’ve been told it should be situated in the hall under the biggest of the floral displays. The grandfather clock will have to be moved, of course.

‘Lastly, the disco in the evening will require to be set up at least an hour beforehand to account for the lighting effects, the testing of the equipment, the correct placing of the speakers, and so on.

‘Mrs Quicke, even if we strip out all the furniture from the whole of the ground floor—’

Ellie put her hands to her head. ‘We can’t possibly do that. Some of these antiques are fragile, they were in my husband’s family, and the clock repairer said that the grandfather clock in the hall must never be moved.’

‘Mrs Quicke, I do most strongly advise you to rethink. The combination of drink and disco in the evening will play havoc with your mahogany and carpets.’

Ellie gasped. What he said was all too true. ‘I didn’t realize.’

‘Sit yourself down,’ he said, handing her to a chair and revealing a consideration for her welfare that she found soothing. He patted her hand. Close to, she could see beads of sweat on his forehead, and she realized the bright yellow hair was a wig. Underneath all that gaiety was a kindly, middle-aged and probably balding man.

He said, ‘Why have you let out your house for wedding receptions, if you are not prepared for what happens on these occasions? Let me guess; you haven’t even bothered to insure against loss and damage?’

‘I never thought of it.’

‘Then think of it now. I can arrange it for you, if you wish.’

‘Thank you, yes. Please do. I am hosting the first reception as a favour to a friend. It is a small, private occasion and I hadn’t anticipated any loss or damage. As to the evening event, this was wished upon me by my daughter whose eyes, if I may say so, are bigger than her stomach. Could we not have a small three piece band and not a rowdy disco? Then people could dance in the hall and sit out in the other two rooms.’

‘Mrs Quicke, I sympathize, but you are a lady who has let time slip by without realizing it. A disco it has to be, nowadays. It’s already been booked. If you take my advice, you’ll lock up all the bedrooms except one in which to dump coats, and remove all knick-knackery and valuable china.’

‘Oh, dear. What am I to do? This house is not at all suitable for such an event. Could I pay for some hotel rooms somewhere?’

‘At this late stage? Everything will have been booked up months ago. I, who am in the business, can put my hand on my heart and tell you to think again.’

It was too much. Ellie was a much stronger, more decisive person than she had been when her first husband died. She had learned how to cope with tasks which she would have considered beyond her in the old days. She had mastered simple jobs on her computer, she had made a new circle of friends, learned how to manage her finances – with help – and given advice to others which had proved acceptable and sensible. She had managed, through networking in the community, to right certain wrongs and bring a few villains to justice. Now and then she had even been able to counter her daughter’s wilder schemes.

But this business of Diana’s wedding was all too much. Tears threatened. She sniffed. She told herself she was overtired, that she had been shaken up by everything that had happened these last few days. She told herself to be strong, but it was no good. She began to weep, at the same time apologizing for her weakness.