This Private Plot (5 page)

Chapter Five

Saturday evening

“Thirteen at dinner,” sniffed Mrs. Bennet. “I thought we were twelve, six men and six girls. I don't know how I miscalculated.”

Oliver knew. The forgotten guest was clearly Effie, since the other six females were all called Bennet, the middle-aged Wendy considering herself as much a “girl” as her five daughters. He glanced behind him, but Effie was still standing by the front door out of earshot, taking in the capacious entrance hall of the Bennets' eighteenth century mansion.

Mrs. Bennet leaned closer. She was almost as tall as he was, with black bobbed hair and abrupt features and wearing a yellow silk sheath that you'd have said was too small for her (although you'd have
thought
that
she
was too big for
it
). “I'm not usually superstitious, Oliver, but we don't want to risk any bad luck tonight, because of Lucinda's engagement.”

“Lucinda's getting married?” Oliver was genuinely delighted, because it would reduce the number of Bennet sisters who considered him a potential husband by twenty percent. This was not a flattering distinction; the number of males who fit this target category was, by now, approaching half the population of Europe, including gay men if necessary; but it still required him on these rare occasions to suffer two or three hours of unwelcome flirtation across the dinner table. Or it would have, had Effie not been there. He hoped.

The trip from Synne to Pigsneye was short, even though no English road planner had followed flying crows since the Roman occupation. Effie drove them in her Renault, because Ben's Lamborghini was a two-seater. She seemed to be avoiding any discussion of the approaching dinner.

“What are you working on when you're not shooting semi-naked models?” she had asked Ben, accelerating around a blind corner on the country lane.

“Wallpaper.”

“You design wallpaper?”

“I photograph it. Some of my wealthier clients have the most beautiful wallpaper in their homes—William Morris, Alphonse Mucha, much of it original. I want them to see that it can be more striking than the paintings or prints they hang over it. So I take a large-format photograph of the wallpaper and they display it in a frame in front of the real wallpaper.”

“But what's to stop them just hanging up an empty frame instead of hiring you?” asked Oliver from the backseat.

Ben sighed. “Because, my dear Ollie, that's not ironic. That's just lazy.”

“What's the difference?”

“About £10,000 a session.”

Following Oliver's directions, Effie had pulled into a gap in a dense arborvitae hedge. A gravel driveway led eventually to a substantial Georgian mansion where she stopped the car under a porte-cochere. “I smell money,” she had muttered. Stepping across the threshold of Bennet Hall, she seemed to shrink slightly and become distracted by the appearance of her shoes. Mr. Bennet, a small man, balding and bespectacled, who always looked as if you were about to speak to him, helped her remove her thin raincoat, exuding nervous hospitality. Oliver had noticed before that Effie, self-assured and fearless when on official police business, was uncomfortable in social settings that contrasted with her own upbringing. At least, he'd always assumed she had a working-class background, although she rarely spoke of her childhood. He'd never met her family.

“So who's Luce's lucky man?” Oliver asked Mrs. Bennet.

“The Honorable Donald Quilt-Hogg, fifth son of the Earl of Yateley. The Honorable Donald is with us tonight. It's an excellent match—not too many potential spouses out there who have all the requirements: just nineteen, a guaranteed virgin, as pure as snow, knows one end of a horse from another, and would look good in a Countess's robes just in case of a regrettable quartet of family tragedies.”

“Well, as long as Luce doesn't mind about the cross-dressing.”

Mrs. Bennet gave what she thought was a girlish giggle.

“I'm describing Lucinda, you rogue, as you well know. It's my heart's desire to see one of my girls marry into the aristocracy.”

Oliver thought, “It's your heart's desire to see one of your girls marry full stop.” Although the oldest Bennet sister was only twenty-five, that was thirty-nine in debutante years. Lucinda, fresh out of the starting gate at nineteen—he'd assumed Wendy had measured her daughter in years, not hands—was bucking a trend. Still, from what he'd heard about the current finances of the current Lord Yateley (and currency didn't feature much), there was a clear tit for tat in the pairing, no doubt starting with Lucinda's well-heeled father helping to get the Yateley family jewels out of hock in time for the wedding. Never mind the
nouveau,
feel the
riche
.

“And when did the Hon. Don pop the question?” Oliver asked.

Mrs. Bennet lowered her voice still further. “Well, dear, he's not exactly asked her in so many words, which is why we don't want to take any chances with Lady Luck. Lafcadio and I will leave the dining room to you eleven youngsters. I'd join you, but Lafcadio sulks if he's made to dine alone, the brute, and we girls may not see the checkbook for a month.”

We girls.
Wendy Bennet didn't like to be reminded that there was any generation younger than her own. “My oldest daughter's in her twenties,” she would frequently confess with an expression that anticipated your shocked disbelief, and then would look away coyly so she never had to notice that it wasn't forthcoming.

Mr. Bennet was now ushering Effie into the presence of his wife, who managed to force her lower face into a dazzling smile while her eyes skewered the surplus female guest with a malevolent glare. Effie, who had faced down criminal court judges, murderers, and other evildoers, quailed slightly. The senior Bennets withdrew to bully the hired kitchen staff, and the new arrivals were shown into the drawing room.

Once Effie's pupils had adjusted to the blaze of gilded furniture, ormolu clocks, and gold-edged porcelain, she became aware that the settees supported a full hand of Bennet daughters, all staring at her with a mix of curiosity and appraisal. It was unlikely that anyone had ever dared bring the girls' shared plainness to their notice, but that hadn't stopped them devoting much of their time—it would be redundant to call it their “free” time—and much of their father's fortune to grooming and styling. For a quiet dinner at home, the sisters were decked out in bright bracelets, necklaces, and earrings that almost, but not quite, eclipsed the satin and chiffon of their designer gowns. Effie, cool and stunning in the newer of the two dresses she'd brought with her—a blue cotton Monsoon sundress that Oliver had assured her would be adequate for the occasion—felt self-conscious and underdressed.

As Oliver made the introductions, she used her police training to fix which sister was which, noting the color of their dresses and their expensive hairstyles. (Her own mutinous curls had been dragged into a tentative ponytail.) The girls' listless conversation gave her less to work with, with the possible exceptions of Davina, the oldest and least unattractive (dark bob like her mother's, black Valentino), who seemed to have some spark of personality. Unfortunately, not a very pleasant one. Lucinda, the youngest (medium brown hair, long and upswept, caramel Dior) never spoke at all, but gazed with a half-smile at the Honorable Donald Quilt-Hogg. The other sisters gazed frankly at Ben. As Oliver had once commented, Ben didn't so much ooze charm as squirt it.

The same could not be said of the Honorable Donald (Norton & Sons, tweed). He was a tall, well-built young man, with prematurely thinning blondish hair, whose speech was similarly sparse, apart from a sporadic comment that sounded to Effie like “Ah, jolly old honkers!” followed by a throaty chuckle.

Oliver, sensing Effie's discomfort, poured two glasses of white Sauterne from a gold-rimmed cooler on the sideboard and passed one to her without asking. She finished it in two gulps. After an agonizing twenty minutes of desultory small talk about the London Season, the door opened and Toby came in, followed by another young man.

“Sorry I'm late,” Toby said. “Eric and I got caught in the theatre traffic.”

“Still, better it's us that's ‘late' than any of you girls, eh?” said his companion, with a general leer for the room. “Know what I mean?” he added unnecessarily, but the sisters' laughter was apparently genuine. Lucinda whispered an explanation into Quilt-Hogg's ear, and he nodded, muttering his favorite phrase again.

“Oh, Eric,” cried Davina, taking the newcomer by the arm, “for Jesu's sake, forbeare. Come and meet the new arrivals.”

“At your cervix, dear madam,” the young man declared. He was introduced to Quilt-Hogg, Ben, and finally to Effie, to whom he bowed with comic gallantry.

“Nice one, Olls,” Eric said, nudging Oliver and indicating Effie with a sideways nod of his head. “Like the hair.”

Oliver smiled politely, wishing he had Wendy Bennet's talent for signaling utter contempt at the same time. Eric Mormal (Tesco, black cotton) was an old school friend of Toby's, a lean, pale specter, who looked like a stretched thirteen-year-old, complete with residual acne, a pubic moustache, and a mind permanently in the gutter—not so much for the filth to be found there, but because it was the best place to metaphorically look up women's skirts. He worked for a nearby cooperative farm, but his bliss was to become a full-time rock legend as evidenced by spiky dyed-blond hair, tattoos, and a collection of hoops in his ear that made it look like a shower curtain.

“So who are you fronting now?” Oliver asked, trying to remember what Toby had last told him about Mormal's musical career. “Is it still The Gong Farmers?”

“Nah, we have a new lineup now: we're called ‘Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy.'” He tried to toss a stuffed olive into his mouth, without success. It rolled under a sofa.

What was Mormal doing here? Oliver wondered. For girls of the Bennets' micro-class—Orwell would have stuck them in the lower-upper-middle bracket—the provincial dinner party was still the primary
lek
, the gentrified equivalent of the singles bar. No doubt it was at some similar, very soft society event that the Honorable Donald had been strutting his well-tailored but fraying plumage when Lucinda, scenting an aristo, had wafted a few choice pheromones in his direction; thus the Hon. Don was undone. But Eric Mormal was the barrel's scrapings, the living reason why “uncouth” has no antonym. Surely Wendy wasn't this desperate?

Ben had been invited to squeeze onto an unyielding settee between the Bennets' only twins, Clarissa and Catriona (both loose blonde curls, yellow Lanvin and blue LaCroix, respectively) and was asking them politely where he might have seen them before when a young woman in an ill-fitting housemaid's uniform belted a gong beside the fireplace, a fearful summons to the dining room. He got up gratefully from his Bennet sandwich, and the two girls followed silently in his wake.

The customary separation of couples at the dining table didn't seem to apply to Lucinda and the Honorable Donald, presumably so that if the urge to propose came over him during the meal, he could skip the legwork and drop to one knee straight from his chair. Effie, however, was squashed between Quilt-Hogg on her right and Mormal on her left, while Oliver was consigned to the other side of the table. He had squeezed her elbow reassuringly as they entered the dining room. “Just signal if I start to drink the finger-bowl,” she had whispered, nervously scanning the ranks of silverware that bordered her tablemat.

“Did you meet Oliver up at Oxford, Effie?” Xanthe Bennet (blond chin-length hair, gray Chanel) ventured from across the table, after they had taken their seats.

“No, but I met him
in
Oxford, once,” said Effie with a smile, and immediately watched her witticism sail effortlessly over Xanthe's head. She'd noticed that, among the bling, each girl was wearing a diamond-encrusted pin with the initial of her first name. It wouldn't have surprised her if Xanthe thought it her entire signature.

“So where did you go to college?” Davina now demanded, clearly the chief hostess in her mother's absence.

“Just Hendon.”

“Is there a University of Hendon? We don't know it.”

“It's the police training establishment, the Peel Centre,” Effie explained, as a dish of strangely soapy consommé arrived in front of her.
Spoon
, she thought.

“So what are you?” asked Xanthe, “a Scotland Yard superintendent, like Oliver's uncle?”

“Just a sergeant for now.”

“Hey, Olls,” called Mormal, between noisy inhalations of the soup, “do you make Effie keep her uniform on? It's the black stockings, innit?”

“Effie's my uncle's principal assistant,” Oliver explained, hoping his pride in his girlfriend would cheer her a little. He knew that her role as a guest would keep the Strongitharm Look in check, much as he longed to see Mormal zapped by it. “That means she's a plain-clothes officer.”

“How appropriate,” murmured Davina with a private smile. Effie eviscerated a dinner roll.

“Well, Effie,” said Mormal, patting her on the shoulder, “you can feel my collar any time. And not just my collar, if you know what I mean,” he added, winking at Oliver across the table.

“Tragically, I do,” Effie muttered, but Mormal wasn't listening. He had jumped to his feet, holding his soup spoon as if it were a microphone.

“And now a little recitation entitled ‘She was only the policeman's daughter, but she let the chief inspector…'”

Once again, all the sisters dissolved into indulgent laughter.

“Oh, Eric,” chortled Catriona, “you're so
leisure
.”

Mormal subsided into his chair at an angle that would let him glimpse down Effie's neckline each time she took a sip of consommé, which, like Mormal, was thick and unwholesome.