The Secret of Annexe 3 (5 page)

It was funny about names, thought Sarah. You could often tell what a person was like from a name. Take the Arkwright woman, for instance, who had cancelled her room, Annexe 4 – the
drifting snow south of Solihull making motoring a perilous folly, it appeared. Doris Arkwright! With a name like that, she just had to be a suspicious, carefully calculating old crab-crumpet! And
she wasn’t coming – Binyon had just brought the message to her.

Minus one: and the number of guests was down to thirty-eight.

Oddly enough, one of the things very much on Sarah Jonstone’s mind early that evening was the decision she had made (so authoritatively!) to allow ‘Caribbean’ in the Scrabble
final. And she could hardly forget the matter, in view of a most strange coincidence. Later on in the evening, the judge for the fancy-dress competition would be asking whether another
‘Caribbean’ should be allowed, since one of the male entrants had gaily bedecked himself in a finely authentic Rastafarian outfit. ‘The Mystery of the East’ (the judge
suggested) could hardly accommodate such an obviously West Indian interpretation? Yet (as one of the guests quietly pointed out) it wasn’t really ‘West Indian’ at all – it
was ‘Ethiopian’; and Ethiopia had to be East in anyone’s atlas – well, Middle East, anyway. Didn’t it all depend, too (as another of the guests argued with some
force), on exactly what this ‘East’ business meant, anyway: didn’t it depend on exactly whereabouts on the globe one happened to be standing at any particular time? The upshot of
this difference of opinion was that ‘Caribbean’ was accepted for a second time in the Haworth Hotel that New Year’s Eve.

It would be a good many hours into New Year’s Day itself before anyone discovered that the number of guests was down to thirty-seven.

D
URING THE TIMES
in which these events are set, there occurred a quite spectacular renaissance in fancy-dress occasions of all types. In pubs, in clubs,
in ballrooms, at discos, at dinner parties – it was as if a collective mania would settle upon men and women wherever they congregated, demanding that at fairly regular intervals each of them
should be given an opportunity to bedeck the body in borrowed plumes and for a few hours to assume an entirely alien personality. Two years previously (the Haworth’s first such venture) the
New Year’s party had taken ‘What we were wearing when the ship went down’ as its theme, with the emphasis very much upon the degree of imagination, humour and improvisation that
could be achieved with a very minimum of props. The theme for the following New Year’s Eve had been ‘This Sporting Life’; and since this theme had been announced in the brochure,
some of the guests had taken the challenge most seriously, had turned their backs on improvisation, and had brought appropriate costumes with them. This year, in accord with the temper of the
times, participants had been given even wider scope than before, with ample time and opportunity to hire their chosen outfits and to acquire suitable make-up and accessories – in short, to
take the whole thing far too seriously. The hotel’s ‘Rag Bag’ still stood in the games room, but only one or two had rummaged through its contents that afternoon. After all, the
current theme had been likewise pre-announced, and all the guests knew exactly what was coming; and, to be fair, in many cases the fancy-dress evening was one of the chief reasons for them choosing
the Haworth Hotel in the first place. On such occasions, the greatest triumph would be registered when a person went through the first part of the evening – sometimes a good deal longer
– totally unrecognized even by close acquaintances: a feat which Binyon himself had accomplished the previous year when only by a process of elimination had even his hotel colleagues finally
recognized the face of their proprietor behind the bushy beard and beneath the Gloucestershire cricket-cap of Dr W.G. Grace.

This year the enthusiasm of the guests was such – all but six had presented themselves in various guises – that even Sarah, not by nature one of the world’s obvious have-a-go
extroverts, found herself wishing that she were one of the happy band drinking red or blue cocktails in the restaurant-cum-ballroom on the ground floor at the back of the hotel, where everything
was now almost ready. The whole of the area was surprisingly warm, the radiators round the walls turned up to their maximum readings, and a log fire burning brightly in a large old grate that was
simultaneously the delight of guests and the despair of management. But tonight the fire was dancing smokelessly and merrily, and the older folk there spoke of the times when their shadows had
passed gigantic round the walls of their childhood, and when in the late hours of the night the logs had collapsed of a sudden in a firework of sparks. Abetting this fire, in a double illumination,
were tall red candles, two on each of the tables, and all already lit, with the haloes that formed around them creating little pools of warm light amid the darkling, twinkling dining room, and
reflecting their elongated yellow flames in the gleaming cutlery.

It would have been easiest to divide the original guest-list into three tables of thirteen; but in deference to inevitable superstition Binyon had settled for two tables of fourteen and one of
eleven, with each place set only for two courses. At each place, a small white card denoted the seating arrangements for these first two courses, spouse duly positioned next to spouse; but each of
these cards also had two numbers printed on it, denoting a different table for the third and fourth courses, and a different table again for the fifth and sixth. This system had been tried out the
previous year; and although on that occasion one or two of the couples had failed to follow instructions too carefully, the social mix effected thereby had proved a huge success. The only real
problem attendant upon such a system was the awkwardness of transferring side plates from one seat to another, but this had been solved by the supremely simple expedient of dispensing with rolls
and butter altogether.

It was at about a quarter to eight (eating would begin at eight o’clock) when the nasty little episode occurred: Sarah could vouch for the time with reasonable confidence. One of the women
guests from the annexe, one dressed in the black garb of a female adherent of the Ayatollah, informed Sarah in a voice muffled by the double veil of her yashmak that there was something rather
unpleasant written on the wall of the Ladies’ lavatory, and Sarah had accompanied this woman to inspect the offending graffito. And, yes, she agreed with the voice behind the veils that it
was not really very nice at all: ‘I’m nuts’ had been daubed on the wall over one of the washbasins in a black felt pen; and underneath had been added ‘So are Binyon’s
B—’. Oh dear! But it had taken only a few minutes with sponge and detergent to expunge these most distressing words – certainly to the point of illegibility.

The cocktails turned out to be a huge success, for even the most weirdly bedizened strangers were already beginning to mix together happily. Binyon himself, gaudily garbed as the Lord High
Executioner, was making no attempt this year to cloak his identity, and in a kindly way (so Sarah thought, as she looked in briefly) was making a successful fuss of one of the children, a
small-boned nervous little girl dressed up prettily in Japanese costume. The mystical lure of the Orient had clearly provoked a colourful response, and there were one or two immediate hits –
the most stunning being a woman with a lissomly sinuous figure, whose Turkish belly-dancer’s outfit (what little there was of it) was causing several pairs of eyes (besides Binyon’s) to
sparkle widely with fornicatory intent. There was, as far as Sarah could see, only one real embarrassment amongst the whole lot, and that in the form of the gaunt-faced snooker king from Swindon,
who had turned up as a rather too convincing version of Gandhi – a Gandhi, moreover, clearly in the latter stages of one of his emaciating fasts. But even he appeared happy enough, holding a
cocktail in one hand, and ever hitching up his loin-cloth with the other.

It would not be long now before the guests began to drift to their places, to start on the Fresh Grapefruit Cerisette – already laid out (to be followed by the Consommé au Riz); and
Sarah picked up a Tequila Sunrise and walked back through to Reception, where she locked the front door of the hotel. Her head was aching slightly, and the last thing she wanted was a six-course
meal. An early night was all she really craved for; and that (she told herself) was what she
would
have, after giving a hand (as she’d promised) with the Grilled Trout with Almonds
and then with the Pork Chop Normandy. (The Strawberry Gâteau, the cheese and biscuits and the coffee, Binyon had assured her, would be no problem.) She had never herself been a big eater, and
for this reason she was always a little vexed that she could put on weight so easily; and unlike the Mahatma, perhaps, she most certainly did not wish to face the new year with a little extra
poundage.

The cocktail tasted good; and with ten or fifteen minutes to spare before the grapefruit plates would need to be cleared Sarah lit one of the half-dozen cigarettes she allowed herself each day,
enjoying the sensation as she sat back in her chair and inhaled deeply.

Ten minutes to eight.

It could have been only some two or three minutes later that she heard the noise, fairly near her. And suddenly, illogically – with the stillness of the half-lit, empty entrance hall
somehow emphasized by the happy voices heard from the dining room – she experienced a sense of fear that prickled the roots of her honey-coloured hair. And then, equally suddenly, everything
was normal once again. From the door of the Gents’ lavatory there emerged a gaily accoutred personage who on any normal evening might justifiably have been the cause of some misgiving on her
part; but upon whom she now bestowed a knowingly appreciative smile. It must have taken the man some considerable time to effect such a convincing transformation into a coffee-coloured, dreadlocked
Rastafarian; and perhaps he hadn’t quite finished yet, for even as he walked across to the dining room he was still dabbing his brown-stained hands with a white handkerchief that was now more
chocolate than vanilla.

Sarah drank some more of the liberally poured cocktail – and began to feel good. She looked down at the only letter that had found its way into her tray that morning: it was from a
Cheltenham lady thanking the hotel for the fact that her booking of a room had been answered with ‘laudable expedition’ (‘very quickly’, translated Sarah), but at the same
time deploring the etiquette of these degenerate days that could allow the ‘Dear Madam’ of the salutation to be complemented by the ‘Yours sincerely’ of the valediction.
Again, Sarah smiled to herself – the lady would probably turn out to be a wonderful old girl – and looked up to find the Lord High Executioner smiling down, in turn, at her.

‘Another?’ he suggested, nodding to the cocktail.

‘Mm – that would be nice,’ she heard herself say.

What had she remembered then? She could recall, quite certainly, clearing away after the soup course; picking up the supernumerary spoons and forks that marked the place of
that pusillanimous spirit from Solihull, Doris Arkwright; standing by in the kitchen as a Pork Chop Normandy had slithered off its plate to the floor, to be replaced thither after a perfunctory
wipe; drinking a third cocktail; dancing with the Lord High Executioner; eating two helpings of the gâteau in the kitchen; dancing, in the dim light of the ballroom, a sort of chiaroscuro
cha-cha-cha with the mysterious ‘Rastafarian’ – the latter having been adjudged the winner of the men’s fancy-dress prize; telling Binyon not to be so silly when he’d
broached the proposition of a brief dive beneath the duvet in her temporary quarters; drinking a fourth cocktail, the colour of which she could no longer recall; feeling slightly sick; walking up
the stairs to her bedroom before the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’; feeling
very
sick; and finally finding herself in bed. Those were the pretty definite events of a crowded
evening. (‘But there must have been so many other little things, Miss Jonstone?’) And there
were
other things, yes. She remembered, for example, the banging of so many doors
once the music and the singing had finally ended – half-past midnight, it must have been – when standing by her window (alone!) she had seen the guests from the annexe walking back to
their rooms: two of the women, their light-coloured raincoats wrapped around them, with the prize-winning Rastafarian between them, a hand on either shoulder; and behind that trio, another trio
– the yashmak’d, graffiti-conscious woman, with a Samurai on one side and Lawrence of Arabia on the other; and bringing up the rear the Lord High Executioner, with a heavy, dark coat
over his eastern robes. Yes! And she remembered quite clearly seeing all of them, including Binyon, go
into
the annexe, and then Binyon, fairly shortly afterwards, coming
out
, and
fiddling for a moment or two with the Yale lock on the side door of the annexe – presumably to secure the inmates against any potential intruders.

It was just before 7 a.m. when Sarah woke, for a few seconds finding some difficulty in recalling exactly where she was. Then, it had been with a wholly childlike delight that
on opening her curtains she saw the canopy of snow that enveloped everything – four or five inches of it on the ledge outside her window, and lodging heavily along the branches of the trees.
The world outside looked so bitterly chill. But she was happily conscious of the square little radiator, now boiling hot, that made her room under the eaves so snugly warm; and through the
frost-whorled window-panes she looked out once more at the deep carpet of snow: it was as if the Almighty had taken his brush, after the last few hours of the death-struck year, and painted the
earth in a dazzling Dulux Super-White. Sarah wondered about slipping back into bed for a brief while, but decided against it. Her head was beginning to ache a little, and she knew there were some
aspirin in the kitchen. In any case she’d promised to help with the breakfasts. Much better to get up – even to go out and walk profanely across the virgin snow. As far as could be
seen, there were no footprints, no indentations whatsoever, in the smooth surface of snow that surrounded the strangely still hotel, and a line from a poem she’d always loved came suddenly to
mind: ‘All bloodless lay the untrodden snow . . .’