The Uninvited Guests (13 page)

Smudge had a job turning, because Lady’s hocks bumped into the bed, but she achieved it, and shut the door and locked it.

She leaned against the locked door, weak suddenly. Her pulse and every feeling part of her plunged downwards; she seemed to drop into a chasm. It was as if she were the tightest strung of violin strings, and had been snipped, in an instant, to lie slack and baseless. She was dizzy at what she had done, feeble and breathless. She struggled with reason and feverish wonder.

Lady seemed to have no idea whatever of her extraordinary situation. She nosed the quilt thoughtfully, but Smudge could see that her thoughts were very tiny.

She stood up straight again, and tightened the knot in Clovis’s scarf around her waist. Her equilibrium began to re-establish itself. She had chosen the perfect night for it, nobody would notice the pony with the party going on – grown-ups could only concentrate on one thing at a time. She was achieving her Great Undertaking. She began to smile.

‘I had better find something for you to eat,’ she said to the pony. ‘I don’t want you to get bored and draw attention, neighing.’

3

SMELTS AND SMITHEREENS

John Buchanan’s blue Rolls-Royce slipped between the two impractically small gatehouses at the beginning of Sterne’s drive, just as the first lightning bolt illuminated the gentle crenellations and startled the sharp flints on the ground into relief. The banging of the thunder came a few moments later, like a rolling pin on a metal feed-bin to frighten rats, but John, cocooned on leather seats within the car’s consistent growl, was happily protected from the elements. There was no need to fiddle about with the stick for the wipers; the rain began in large, spare drops and the house was easy to make out beyond the tunnel of the drive.

He watched the sweeping beam of his headlights with a thrill akin to acquisition as they smeared across the trees, garden, walls, and into the nighttime secret spaces of Sterne. Powerfully, they took it all in, settling as he stopped, on the porch that would shelter him and the front door that would welcome him.

He turned the headlights off, and the engine, and got out of the car, removing his driving gloves and flexing stiff fingers. He tossed the gloves back into the car and walked up to the house. He was exactly on time.

Standing under the porch, out of the rain that now hit the windows in gusts, like handfuls of stones, John gave the bell a sustained and masterful pull.

He waited a long time, listening to the spaniels barking and flinging themselves about within, before Mrs Trieves, in her interminable black, opened it.

‘Good evening, sir.’ She smiled – if not warmly then certainly with the intention of welcome.

John Buchanan was jovial as, batting away the leaping dogs, he entered. ‘Good evening, Mrs Trieves; I’m expected this time!’

‘Come in, sir: let me take your coat. Get down, Nell! You’ll find the family in the drawing room – would you like to follow me?’

‘I should think I know where the drawing room is, Mrs Trieves.’

‘Of course, sir. Then you’ll excuse me.’

He hadn’t intended to dismiss her, but she darted away, suddenly – as if she had something urgent to attend to. The dogs scampered after her, and he was left alone in the high squareness of the hall. The stair stretched up ahead of him and, in the quiet, the vast fire asserted itself. He could hear the flames, licking.

He thought that if the house were his he would have the place wired as a matter of urgency – wired from top to bottom. He would throw light into those corners, illuminate all with electrical power, as every civilised place was now illuminated. It would mean getting behind all the panelling, of course, but that could be easily removed, and the fiddly plaster, too. He was about to go over to it and give it a tap to check its condition when he heard the sound of a woman’s tread on the stairs, and Emerald very soon came into view.

She came down towards him, gleaming, and for the second time that day he was nonplussed, and thought unaccountably of the bottomless settee in the drawing room; he pictured falling through it to loud laughter.

‘Hello, John – what weather! Were you caught in it?’

‘Oh, not exactly—’

She was wearing his cameo. ‘We’ve had an adventure, have you heard?’

‘Heard?’

‘About the accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘The train crash.’

‘Heavens!’

‘Yes, on the branch line, not far from here.’

‘Any deaths?’

‘We haven’t heard. But they’ve directed some of the survivors up here to Sterne, and naturally we’re happy to help, but the sordid Railway haven’t sent anybody up for them and they’re rather … hanging about the place.’

John cast an eye about the hall. ‘Where can you have put them?’

‘They’re all in the morning room at the moment. Would you like to see?’

He was doubtful; he had not envisaged this and did not like surprises. ‘Well… I suppose.’

‘Come with me.’ She went ahead of him, the comb in her dark hair glittering with green and amber as they passed from the hall. He longed to touch it.

Reaching the morning room, she put her hand on the doorknob and glanced up at him.

‘If I open the door, they might all start talking to us,’ she said.

‘Well don’t, if you’d rather not.’

‘Poor things, I should think they’re exhausted.’

She opened the door wide: the morning room was empty. There was not a soul inside it, just the lingering smell of wet, wool coats.

‘Where could they have gone to?’ said Emerald.

John was as perplexed as she – more so. ‘How many are there? Would they have taken themselves off?’

‘A good many. I can’t think.’

At that moment Myrtle – in fresh apron and cap – darted from the passage that led to the kitchen, and made to speed past them. She was carrying several candles.

‘Myrtle, do you know where the passengers have gone?’

Mrytle paused, and ducked her head, hastily. ‘Yes, Miss Em; Mrs Trieves has moved them to the study. They kept coming out and getting in the way.’

The study was towards the back of the house, giving onto the hall. It was a gloomy, seldom used room, whose only benefit over the morning room was being further away from the kitchen and the impending party.

‘Oh, I see; thank you. I really must see about getting them collected.’

Emerald was anxious, as harassed as he’d ever seen her. He was accustomed to, and admired, a vibrant Emerald, not an anxious one.

‘You’re wearing my ornament,’ he said, to return her to more important matters.

Her fingers went to the cameo at her throat, resting in the hollow made by her collarbones.

‘Happy birthday.’

She smiled at him, automatically. ‘Thank you, John. Come and meet the others.’

The drawing room was awash with colours which, as water-paints do, seemed to fill the very air. Burnt orange, gold, pink, candlelight’s glow and the various figures of stags, birds and unicorns that were represented in chintz, tapestry, cloth and carving, all seemed almost to float, insubstantial, in the grand size of its pale proportions. The figures in the room: Patience, Ernest, Clovis and the gentleman traveller, were as figures at the ballet; they were no longer prosaic, but infected with grace, absorbed into the house.

Clovis was pulling one of the curtains across the windows against the night, awkwardly, and stopped halfway through the action as they came in. Patience was seated on an upright chair, and stood to greet them. She wore white – or something near to it – but her dress, too, had taken on the colours of the room. Ernest was near a large gilt framed painting; on seeing Emerald he, like John, experienced a falling sensation, and grasped his hands together behind his back more firmly, as if to steady himself. The gentleman traveller was on the broken settee – quite comfortably, it seemed, having miraculously avoided its rotten centre. He sprang up as John and Emerald came in, his black moustache twitching delightedly.

‘The birthday girl!’ cried Patience.

‘This is John Buchanan,’ Emerald announced him to the room. ‘Clovis, where’s our mother?’

Clovis shrugged. He raised a careless hand to John before dragging it through his hair, which stood on end, subsiding slowly over the next few moments.

‘Good evening, John,’ he said. ‘Did you go home at all, earlier, or have you been lurking around all this time we were dressing?’

John was indulgent. ‘Good evening, Clovis,’ he said amiably.

‘You look absolutely divine, Emerald,’ said Patience.

‘Thank you. John, may I introduce Miss Patience Sutton,’ Emerald continued, ‘and her brother, Ernest Sutton. Ernest, Patience, John Buchanan.’

They all shook hands and nodded or ducked heads, showing their pleasure in greeting one another with early-evening shyness; they were all – except their passenger guest – still just at an age where dinner parties felt a little like childhood games wearing their mother’s shoes and father’s top hats.

‘And this is … Oh, I do apologise, I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Charlie Traversham-Beechers, a pleasure to meet you.’

It was ten minutes to eight. They arranged themselves in a loose circle.

‘Charlie is an interloper,’ announced Clovis cheerfully. ‘He ought to be with the other passengers, but luckily I weeded him out.’

‘Yes, I do apologise most humbly for my appearance: my tie is in my luggage and I have no idea where that’s got to.’

‘It must be very discombobulating,’ said Patience sympathetically, averting her eyes from the dark hair sprouting from his slightly open shirt.

Charlie burst into happy laughter, and the others found they followed suit, although they had no notion why.

‘Discombobulated!’ he laughed. ‘Yes, that’s one way to describe the effect of being in a dreadful train accident, I suppose, Miss Sutton. Discombobulating!’

Patience blushed to the roots of her fair hair. ‘I meant the luggage,’ she said quietly.

‘Of course, of course.’

Ernest went to his sister and stood near her, lending silent support with his presence, as the gentleman went on, ‘I hadn’t expected to find a house here; I suppose I had no idea what to expect. It’s not every day one’s railway carriage is flung from the tracks like that!’

‘Dreadful… And you were separated from the others?’ asked Emerald, seeking to discover more.

‘Yes, I tagged along with them, or they with me, I suppose, but it was a stroke of luck to find this place, I must say.’

‘For us, too,’ said Clovis gallantly, but not exactly echoing the feelings of anybody else present.

‘Did the porter tell you the way up to the house?’ enquired Patience, scenting him out like a rabbit. (‘The
guard
,’ muttered Clovis, but she ignored him.)

‘And did they mention what they might be going to do about you all?’ added Emerald.

‘And were you on foot, as well? Did none of you see the cart and brougham?’ Ernest asked with intelligence. He, of all of them, was the coolest and least affected by the gentleman’s bizarre vitality.

‘My, my! I’ll take you in order.’ He spun around on his heels, pointing at them one by one. ‘Yes, he did. No, they did not. We all walked, and it was dashed uncomfortable; not a carriage in sight. These shoes were intended for carpets and admiration, not stamping along cart tracks. Those other poor beggars are more used to being foot-traffic, I should think.’

They were none of them any the wiser.

Just then, there was a loud crash from some upper room and all turned their eyes to the ceiling, where the chandeliers trembled.

‘Thunder or furniture?’ asked Clovis.

‘You didn’t let any of them upstairs, did you?’ asked Emerald anxiously.

‘I haven’t a clue where they are, Em.’ Clovis was unrepentant. ‘I was with our friend in the library until just a few moments ago. Mrs Trieves is in charge of them. I say, would you like to borrow a collar and tie? I’m sure I can find one.’

‘Borrow. Of course. We should have thought of it!’ And he laughed again.

‘Wait there. Two ticks,’ said Clovis and galloped from the room, but Charlie Tramerson-Beamer, smoothly smirking, went after him.

It wasn’t Lady who had toppled the dressing table, but Smudge, whilst kneeling on it to outline the pony’s ears. The fright of it had sent Lady clattering backwards and knocking into the door. These combined noises amounted to the crash heard below in the drawing room. Smudge’s legs were now splayed like a deer; one hand holding the heavy mirror, which was wobbling precariously between fallen table and floor, the other gripping the end of the halter rope.

‘Good girl, Lady, stand.
Stand
,’ she said soothingly, and Lady stood, as Smudge carefully righted the mirror – unbroken; pony and child escaping seven years’ bad luck by a whisker – and picked up her scattered charcoals.

‘Now, in a moment I ought to go down, so you’re to wait here, Lady, and be a very good girl until I return.’

Lady had the look of a pony that might or might not do as it was told.

In his room, Clovis was rummaging through his wardrobe to find something suitable for his new friend to wear about his neck, while Charlotte prowled her room, ignoring the pathetic mews now coming from the box under the bed. In the drawing room, Emerald – rouged and rallying – beamed invitingly at John Buchanan, who strode past her to address Patience.

‘We’ve met before, Miss Sutton,’ he said, ‘when we were much younger. Many years ago, it would have been. I remember you well, and I don’t think you’ve changed a bit. You would have had another brother with you, though, because,’ he turned to Ernest, enquiringly, ‘we haven’t met, have we?’

‘You’re mistaken, we have; I’m Ernest,’ said Ernest.

‘Yes, this is Ernest,’ Patience corroborated.

‘Ernest? But I seem to remember that
he
was called Ernest – the boy I remember here,’ said John.

‘Yes, that was me. I remember you, too, John,’ said Ernest, to help him out.

‘That’s rum. I’m afraid I don’t remember you at all,’ said John, frowning.