Watson's Choice (4 page)

‘Then there is the question of the little boys,’ said Bell. ‘Mrs Call tells me they confidently expect to be present at the dinner-party and have, in fact, received a promise from you, Sir Bohun, to that effect.’

‘Yes, yes, they have,’ admitted the boys’ guardian, speaking hastily. ‘Won’t hurt them to stay up for once. They needn’t take the whole dinner. Soup, and a slice of breast will be about their mark, and then some ice-cream and fruit.’

‘Mrs Call seemed perturbed,’ began the secretary, ‘to think that their normal bedtime – ’

‘Nanny Call has a bee in her bonnet about bedtimes,’ snapped Sir Bohun. ‘I
must
have the small chaps at the party. Philip is to be little Master Rucastle, and he is to be provided with a slipper to kill cockroaches. A pity he is not a more villainous-looking child, but that can’t be helped. He is being got up Fauntleroy style. Very amusing. Timothy – yes, why not? I hadn’t really thought of a part for
him
, but he’s not more than a baby, really, and will make up nicely into a little girl, and since that wrong-headed secretary of Mrs Bradley’s is determined to be Mrs Grant Munro, we’ll just black-up little Timothy and put a frock on him, and he can be her merry little piccaninny. He need only wear the yellow mask for a few minutes at the beginning of the evening. Now, then, how many stories are being represented, counting the competition items, I wonder?’

Bell recited the list from memory and without hesitation.

‘I wonder why?’ said Laura, half to herself, hoping for some reaction by the teak-faced, taciturn young Spaniard who had been introduced as Manoel Lupez. She was studying the titles of books
in
a small, handsome, mahogany, glass-fronted bookcase in Sir Bohun Chantrey’s library.

‘It is a guilty conscience,’ said Manoel. He moved over to the bookcase and crouched down to scrutinize the titles. ‘
The Memoirs, The Case-Book, The Return, His Last Bow, The Sign of Four
– yes, it is the sign of a guilty conscience. Do you believe, Miss Menzies, in the theory that conscience doth make cowards of us all? I think the poet Shakespeare has said so. Is that your experience’ – his sophisticated Latin eyes summed her up (whether rightly or wrongly was immaterial to Laura) and he hesitated for the fraction of a second – ‘or are you, perhaps, too young to be aware of experience?’

‘Oh, I’ve had a fair amount of experience, one way and another,’ said Laura airily, ‘especially in nipping in the bud.’

‘Nipping in the bud? I am afraid – ’

‘It’s an English metaphor,’ explained Laura, waving a large but very shapely palm. ‘No doubt in Spain you have a word for it. But never mind that now. What’s all this about Sir B. and his guilty conscience? He hasn’t robbed a bank or anything, has he?’

Manoel smiled.

‘His money is his own,’ he said. ‘I think you would like some tea. I have been acquainted with English ladies from time to time, and all of them wish the same thing – “Oh, Señor, that I shall have some tea!”’

‘I suppose you drink nothing but sherry?’ commented Laura. Manoel, who had risen from his crouching position by the bookcase, raised himself on his toes, pirouetted suddenly and with extreme grace on the point of one supple, highly-polished shoe, and then replied, ‘I drink no wine except in the winter, and then not much; otherwise the
tauros
– the bulls, you know – would – how say you? – catch me bending.’

‘You’re a toreador?’

‘
Si, señorita
. One day, if you permit, I will show you my sword and my cape, but I have not them here. My father has an
espada
, however, from Mexico. I show you its use.’

‘Did Sir Bohun ever do any bull-fighting?’

‘He? No. He bought souvenirs. After the war, you know, when there are many bull-fighters dead, and the sport drifts for little money, no doubt there are mothers and widows and sisters with many fine things to sell.’

‘I suppose, sir,’ said Nanny Call, ‘the young gentlemen will have their own little table?’ She surveyed Sir Bohun’s careful arrangements disparagingly. ‘They will hardly eat with your guests.’

‘Would they prefer their own table, Mrs Call?’ Sir Bohun cast a proud eye round the dining-room and altered the position of a spray of copper-beech leaves which he had been especially treasuring for some weeks. ‘It would simplify matters, certainly, if it did not disappoint them to be put on their own.’

‘It would be best, in the circumstances, sir. They would not then notice missing out most of the courses, as, of course, you would hardly expect them to eat through the whole of the dinner.’

‘Oh, there is that, yes. All right, then. How do they respond to the idea of dressing-up, and Timmy having his face blacked, eh?’

‘They have changed parts, sir. I thought it best.’

‘Changed parts?’

‘Yes, Sir Bohun.’ Nannie Call looked her employer so firmly in the eye as she imparted these tidings that he coughed apologetically and said:

‘Really? Really?’ in a feeble and conciliatory tone.

‘I could not have Master Timothy’s face blacked-out,’ pursued the faithful dragon. ‘It would have frightened him terrible. And Master Philip took umbrage at the black velvet tunic and little straight knickers and the deep lace collar you ordered. He said he wasn’t the princes in the Tower, and made himself very awkward, so I’ve shortened them up for Master Tim.’

‘I see. I see. All right. Just as they prefer it. Quite settled now, is it? No more bother, I mean?’

‘No, sir. Thank you, if that is all.’

This, to Sir Bohun’s angry astonishment, although the first, was not the only indication that his writ did not necessarily run. Mrs Bradley and Laura, invited, as were the Dance pair, for the day before the party and to stay on for a few days after it, turned up at tea-time on the twenty-fourth of November, and were formally introduced to Brenda and Toby. When tea was over, Brenda Dance collared Laura and went upstairs with her. Laura, who had given unwinking attention to the siren, to her soft, dark, beautiful ‘little-girl’ hair, to her candid eyes and her fighter’s forearms, and had decided that she liked what she saw, invited Mrs Dance into her room and displayed the outfit of Mrs Grant Munro.

‘Not really my kettle of fish,’ Laura mournfully observed. ‘Wish
now
I hadn’t taken it on. I’ve been re-reading the script, and it seems to me that something in the line of Miss Mary Sutherland would suit me ever so much better. I’m big enough, goodness knows, and I’d adore to wear a boa and a picture hat, and look good-hearted and common. Besides, I can type, and I always get ink on my fingers and wear holes in my gloves.’

‘Mrs Grant Munro?’ said the enraptured Mrs Dance, eyeing Laura’s preparations. ‘Married to an African, and a black baby thrown in for good measure? My
dear
, this is where we change parts! It may take us all night and all to-morrow morning to make over the clothes, but who cares? And dear Bobo will be frantic at having his arrangements upset, and I do love him when he’s frantic!’

‘Here, I’m not a bit of good in the dressmaking line,’ said Laura hastily, alarmed by the suggestion that needlework would be involved in the changeover.

‘No need. I have a certain genius that way. Basically, you see, we need do very little to the costumes except to let down my hems for you, and take yours up for me, and adjust the other measurements a bit,’ Mrs Dance blithely explained.

So, to Sir Bohun’s inarticulate fury, Mrs Dance, mischievous and pretty, appeared as the adventurous, experimental Mrs Grant Munro, and Laura scored a major success as the inhibited, faithful, cruelly misled bride-left-at-the-altar, Miss Mary Sutherland, boa, picture-hat, and all.

This shock to the host came at a bad time. No sooner had Mrs Dance first broken the news to Sir Bohun that she and Laura had changed costumes than she added that she refused to dine wearing her bustle. Then Manoel expressed the view that his Young Holder shirt and trousers were
ignominioso
and caused him to feel
vergonzante
– the latter an adjective which, in his case, Mrs Bradley thought singularly inept, as he was quite the least bashful or shamefaced young man she had ever encountered. In the end it had been decided that the whole party should dine in ordinary evening dress, and then go up and change.

When dinner was over and the party came down again in late nineteenth-century dress, it was seen that Manoel had changed parts with Dance. The stocky, serious, not unlikeable husband of the delicious Brenda was in the Holder undress shirt and trousers, whilst Manoel had taken on the outfit of Doctor Watson.

‘But I shan’t know who
anybody
is, once we begin the competitions!’ screamed Sir Bohun.

‘Why should he
want
to know who anybody is?’ muttered Laura to Mrs Bradley. Her employer did not reply, and Mrs Dance came up at that moment and said to Laura:

‘Any clues to what happens next?’

‘There is some talk of Terpsichore,’ Laura replied. ‘Personally, my get-up makes me think that that particular Muse is one with whose company I can readily dispense this evening.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mrs Dance, with a coquettish hitch of her bustle (for she had accepted Laura’s view that this appendage constituted the major attraction of the costume of Mrs Grant Munro) ‘it’s preferable to the frightful games which Bobo is wishing on us when those kids have gone to bed.’

As though to clinch the argument, Sir Bohun chose this moment to lead Mrs Bradley out for an old-fashioned waltz. He twirled the eccentric draperies of Mrs Farintosh with so much energy that he ended up out of breath, but his partner, not one black hair out of place, seemed as cool as when they had begun, and congratulated him upon his prowess.

She escaped after that, however, by taking charge of the two little boys and telling them a Bowdlerized version of
The Yellow Face
and
Copper Beeches
, for the black girl in the yellow mask had intrigued them, and nobody, it seemed, had troubled to explain what their dressing-up indicated. The character of young Master Rucastle came in for no criticism. The slaughter of cockroaches with a slipper did not occasion anything but common-sense approval from Philip.

‘It’s hurting things that matters; not killing them if they’re pests,’ he declared. He yawned. Timothy observed: ‘I wish the big dog had
eaten
Mr Rucastle!’ Mrs Dance came up as the radiogram ended another waltz.

‘They ought to be in bed,’ she said. ‘I know where they sleep. Come on, lads.’ With a swift kindness which might well have been unexpected in her, she scooped up Timothy and bore him off. Mrs Bradley followed, accompanying Philip, but he turned at the door and said, ‘There’s a whole book about another big dog. I’ve read it once, and I wanted to read it again, but it’s disappeared.’

Sir Bohun had noted the departure of the boys, for, as Mrs
Bradley
turned at the door to come back into the room, he came up to her and said genially:

‘Nuisance about the band. Dare say they’ve given up trying to locate us. Fog’s thicker than ever, Bell says. He’s just been outside on to the terrace to see if he could get a glimpse of them, but couldn’t see an inch beyond the balustrading, and only that far because of the arc lamps I’ve had installed out there in readiness for to-night to help people find their way. We are most lucky to get this pea-souper. Well, now, talking of pea-soupers, I want to begin the real business of the evening – the Sherlock Holmes competitions.’

He went to the middle of the large room and addressed his guests, informing them of pencils and paper to be found in the library and of lists to be compiled, the longest correct list to win a prize. Mrs Dance returned in time to groan into Laura’s ear, at the mention of pencils and paper:

‘How I do
loathe
having to write things down at parties! What do we write, anyway?’

Sir Bohun and his secretary’s next remarks explained this.

‘On view, not hidden, but put in (possibly) unexpected places and sometimes slightly disguised,’ he began, ‘are, altogether – how many did we say, Bell?’

‘Ten, Sir Bohun.’

‘Oh, yes! Well, go on. You tell them.’

‘There are ten items, all of which are mentioned as being of great importance in the problems which Sherlock Holmes so brilliantly solved,’ said Bell. ‘I repeat that these objects are all of first-rate importance such as would be known to, and recognized by, any person even moderately well-read in the classic collections of stories entitled, respectively, the
Adventures
and the
Memoirs
of Sherlock Holmes. It is understood that no competitor removes or alters the appearance or position of any object, and Sir Bohun trusts that there will be no collusion. Each competitor is requested very earnestly to work alone. There is a time-limit of one hour, to begin with, from when Sir Bohun gives the word to begin searching. The objects are in various parts of the house, and every room – the nursery quarters and the servants’ rooms, for example – which is out-of-bounds is clearly marked with a notice on the door.’

‘When you say there is a time-limit of one hour
to begin with –
’ observed Laura.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Sir Bohun. ‘If, at the end of an hour, the majority, that is, more than half of you, want an extension, you can have it. The objects are not hidden away exactly, but there’s no reason why you should not open cupboards and drawers and so forth. However, you need not ransack the rooms. The idea isn’t to have a treasure hunt. The objects can all be found very easily; it’s the identification of them which is the test, for you will find on your competition papers two columns. One is for the name of the object; the other is for the title of the story in which it is mentioned.’

Mrs Dance groaned aloud this time, and one or two others, notably Mrs Godley, her daughter Celia, and Mrs Mildren, looked alarmed. Manoel laughed heartily and Mrs Bradley grinned mirthlessly.

‘I shall excuse myself, on the score of my advanced years, from taking part,’ she announced. Sir Bohun nodded.

‘Thought you’d contract out of it,’ he said. ‘You can sit and talk to me in my den, from which I shall do the time-keeping. Nobody else is excused.’