And everybody joined in. Antonia looked round in dismayed disbelief which quickly turned to anger. They were all there: Mrs Garrison-Gore, looking exhausted and self-deprecating; Oswald, grinning broadly, though showing signs of irritation; Ella, with her familiar air of defensive aloofness; Feversham, elegant and debonair; Maisie, a terrified smile on her face; Lady Grylls, looking sheepish …
No, not everybody – Doctor Klein was again absent.
They were all in it …
‘There you are! We knew you’d come this way sooner or later! We’ve been cooped up here since dawn!’ Lady Grylls cried in exaggerated glee. ‘Hate hiding, unless it is from the Taxman, ha-ha. I beg you not to hate me. The whole thing was all Mrs Garrison-Gore’s idea anyhow. I mean this particular scenario. The double bluff and so on. I haven’t got the brains for such diabolical twists.’
Oswald Ramskritt said, ‘Shall we open the champagne? I think it’s time.’
‘No, no. Antonia and Hugh will need to blow out the candles first,’ Sybil de Coverley said. ‘The candles have started dripping. Do blow out the candles, quick, otherwise the cake will taste foul! Poor Ella took so much trouble making this cake.’
Major Payne surveyed the scene with a mirthless smile; thus the ancient satirist must have contemplated the Ship of Fools. ‘I’d rather someone explained first. My aunt or Miss de Coverley or Mrs Garrison-Gore, perhaps?’ He didn’t make any great effort to keep the stiffness out of his voice. His eyes fixed on Mrs Garrison-Gore.
Mrs Garrison-Gore failed to return his look. She appeared to be entranced by the bowl of dry daffodils on a side table. She was wearing what looked like window curtains fashioned out of stately brocade. Her hair gave every appearance of being freshly permed. She must have brought her own electric tongs, Payne reflected inconsequentially. Everybody seemed to be ridiculously over-dressed. Were he and Antonia expected to be impressed by their sense of occasion? Ella was wearing a high-collared dress in silvery-grey. His aunt was clad in a powder-blue cashmere and wore her pearls. Feversham sported an immaculately cut three-piece Prince of Wales check suit, a butterfly collar and a bow tie.
‘Shall we open the champagne?’ Oswald said again. He sounded impatient. ‘I don’t know about you folks, but I have a thirst. I had a whisky before I came down. I was feeling tense. I guess it’s given me a thirst.’ He wore a sharkskin suit with buttons that looked like opals, perhaps were opals, which, in Payne’s very private opinion, was the most bounderish kind of outfit a chap could ever think of.
‘Major Payne is perfectly right. We need to provide an explanation for our seemingly outrageous conduct.’ Feversham sounded very much the grand seigneur. His monocle flashed. He appeared to have assumed a position of authority. ‘We agreed that we should adhere to the rules, didn’t we?’
‘What rules?’ Oswald asked.
‘The rules of fair play, my dear fellow.’
‘I don’t remember any rules.’
‘We have been terribly good at it so far, why spoil it at the very end? Major Payne and his charming wife are entitled to an explanation.’ Feversham gave a little bow in Antonia’s direction.
‘I think the storm’s starting again.’ Ella was gazing out of the window.
‘How tedious is a guilty conscience – methinks – How did that go on? Methinks – something or other? What exactly did the bishop – or was it some mad radical? – see when he looked into his garden pond?’ Lady Grylls glanced round. ‘I do believe he was a character in one of the bloodiest tragedies ever written, if memory serves me right.’
‘Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake, that seems to strike at me. It was the mad Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi,’ Payne explained in a distant voice. ‘Not a mad radical.’
‘Hugh always manages to convey his vast knowledge with grace and wit,’ Lady Grylls said ingratiatingly.
‘I am sorry, but this whole thing’s started to get on my nerves. I think I’ve had enough of this nonsense,’ Ramskritt said in a very loud voice. His face was red and a vein pulsed in his temple.
Sybil said again that the candles were dripping.
‘No they are not – not any longer!’ Stooping over, Feversham blew out all ten candles at once. ‘Voilà. No more dripping.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Fever.’ Sybil slapped him playfully across the wrist. ‘It’s a bad omen when someone else does it. Oh well, too late now.’ She beamed at Hugh and Antonia. ‘Such fun, having you, as they say, fall into the trap.’
‘We did fall into the trap, yes, but I would hesitate to call it fun,’ Payne said.
Sybil patted Mrs Garrison-Gore’s arm. ‘Congrats, Romany. Well done. Jolly good show. You made it work! What do you think, Nellie? Mission accomplished, eh?’
‘I am not at all sure. Hugh looks as though he’d like nothing better than to strangle me,’ Lady Grylls wailed. ‘Perhaps it was a little thoughtless of us. I’ll never forgive myself.’
‘Good to see you are after all alive, Miss de Coverley,’ Payne said.
Ramskritt turned to Ella who was standing on his left and hissed, ‘Go and change at once. You are dressed with disfiguring austerity. Why do you insist on making yourself look like a nun? You know how much I hate this dress.’
‘But –’
‘At once I said. And don’t give me murderous looks or the Vatican will hear about it.’
Antonia was standing beside Ella and she could hardly believe her ears.
Ella left the room without a word.
‘So that was a hoax,’ Antonia said. ‘A double bluff.’
‘I would like to think we were all involved in an experiment of considerable psychological complexity,’ said Feversham.
‘It was a hoax. We were summoned on a fool’s errand devised around a double bluff,’ said Payne firmly.
‘Sorry folks, but I am getting bored.’ Ramskritt yawned ostentatiously. ‘Perhaps Mrs G-G could entertain us? Come on, Mrs G-G, give us some more old lamps for the new.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.
‘Only that you are a brilliant storyteller. A proper Schehera – you know the one I mean.’ He glanced round. ‘I managed to read some bits from her latest book and I can tell you it is an awesome achievement. As a man of business, I am particularly impressed by Mrs G-G’s enterprise. I am thinking of phoning her publishers and telling them, in case they aren’t aware, and then they may increase her advance!’
‘I wasn’t at all sure whether the double bluff would work,’ Mrs Garrison-Gore said with a frown. ‘Elaborate ruses tend to go wrong. I kept changing the plotline. If I may call it that. I know you have had double bluffs in some of your novels,’ she addressed Antonia.
‘I have had characters discuss the possibility of a double bluff, but I have never actually employed a double bluff as a plot device.’ Antonia hoped she didn’t sound too tart.
‘Deception within the deception … What the hell did you have round your throat?’ Payne asked Sybil. ‘Why didn’t I feel any pulse? A rubber band, I suppose?’
‘Yes. The most horrid thing.’ Sybil shuddered histrionically. ‘Looked positively indecent. I also had to put on a contraption around my chest, like corsets, to make my heartbeat hard to detect. And I wore flesh-coloured tourniquets around the wrists. Fever had thought of everything. Fever managed to outwit you.’
‘He most certainly did,’ Payne conceded.
‘I hit on the concept of the double bluff when Lady Grylls told me you were bound to smell a rat right away. At some point before the “murder”,’ Mrs Garrison-Gore went on. ‘Lady Grylls was to admit to you that it was all a game. Then the “murder” was to take place, but it would seem to come at the wrong time – and it would have every appearance of being a real murder.’
‘I bet Major Payne looks so terribly miffed because he fell for the wheeze,’ Sybil said.
‘That may indeed be the case, though we were also shocked and upset by what happened last night. In fact we found it a nerve-taxing experience. We felt responsible for your death, you see.’ Payne spoke in a tired voice. ‘We felt guilty for failing to prevent it. Does anyone actually imagine that we enjoy dabbling in violent death?’ He looked round. ‘Well, we don’t.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘I am so sorry, Hughie,’ Lady Grylls said in a tremulous voice. ‘Can you find it in your heart to forgive an old and foolish woman? It was terribly insensitive of me. I made a big mistake. I can see that now. Can’t we kiss and make up?’
‘I will have to think about it,’ Payne said.
‘My dear, do you despise me?’ Lady Grylls turned to Antonia.
‘Of course not.’ Antonia smiled. ‘We aren’t really cross. It’s just that I slept badly –’ She broke off. Why make a public spectacle of self-pity?
‘Sybil could have stopped me but she didn’t. Why didn’t you stop me, Sybil?’ Lady Grylls chided her friend. ‘I can plead galloping senility as an excuse – but there is nothing wrong with you, my dear, is there?’
Sybil sighed. ‘It’s this island. When I am here, I tend to act irresponsibly. The island is to blame.’
‘I rather liked the idea of having two John de Coverleys on the scene,’ Mrs Garrison-Gore went on, addressing herself to Hugh and Antonia. ‘You were meant to discover that one was a fake and that it was the real one who killed his sister.’
‘I don’t think my brother is aware of what we have been up to,’ Sybil said. ‘I mean making him the murderer in the game and so on. He will never know. I don’t want anybody to imagine he has been caused any undue distress because he hasn’t.’
‘Did a seagull peck at his hands?’ Antonia asked.
‘Yes. That was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it? I understand Major Payne jumped to the conclusion I’d scratched John as I’d struggled!’
‘You were given some important clues,’ Mrs Garrison-Gore said. ‘Sybil drew your attention to the hidden door in the library. Then there was the fried chicken, the plain-glass monocle and so on – all of which you succeeded in taking into account. You drew all the right conclusions, which of course were also all the wrong conclusions. Your aunt said you would bring order out of the chaos, like sedulous botanists in a wild garden.’
‘Please forgive me, Hughie!’ Lady Grylls cried.
‘Where the hell is Ella? Why is she taking so long? How long does it take to change a dress?’ Ramskritt looked at his watch.
‘I must say Mrs Garrison-Gore is a first-class manipulator. She did manage to fool us.’ Payne seemed to have relented somewhat. ‘We should have seen through the ruse, but we didn’t. It was all rather cleverly staged, wouldn’t you agree, my love?’
‘We were completely bamboozled,’ Antonia smiled.
‘Were you?’ Mrs Garrison-Gore said. She sniffed. ‘Were you really?’
‘Oh yes. It was perfectly done.’ Antonia’s mood had lightened. Why should they be cross with Mrs Garrison-Gore, anyway? The poor woman had only been doing her job, what Lady Grylls and Sybil de Coverley had ordered her to do.
‘I am so sorry about the sleepless night.’ Mrs Garrison-Gore touched Antonia’s arm. She spoke with genuine compassion.
‘I am going to open the champagne now. I don’t think we should wait for Ella. Ella’s sulking. Ella can go to the blazes. She’s doing it to spite me. She hates me. Oh how she hates me.’ Ramskritt laughed. Once more he reached out for the festive bottle. ‘I must have a glass of champagne. Otherwise I may not be responsible for my actions. You don’t really want to see my eyes go pink, do you?’ He smiled. ‘Only kidding.’
‘Now we can. Yes.’ Feversham gave a magisterial nod. ‘Let’s have champers. Jolly good show. I will certainly have a glass m’self. Even if it’s a trifle early in the day. Jolly good show.’
Sybil produced a tray with elegant flute glasses. ‘Perhaps we should all get gloriously drunk. Nothing much else to do, on a horrid day like this. I’m afraid there’s something wrong with the central heating. The thermostat’s being temperamental.’ She peered out of the window. ‘Goodness, look, the sea seems to be getting higher and higher! Rearing with a roar. Poets always think they know best, don’t they?’
They heard a sound like that of a train approaching from a long way down a tube.
‘I find it jolly curious that nature should be so keen on building up such portentous threats instead of getting on with whatever release of forces it has in mind,’ said Feversham.
‘Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like if the house got swept away by a giant wave,’ Sybil said dreamily, hooking her arm through Feversham’s.
‘I used to dream of treasures long lost at sea,’ said Oswald. ‘I imagined ornate chests overflowing with rubies embedded in nacreous green rock, shifted here and there on the sandy floor by shoals of spotted fish … As a young man I was extremely romantic … Still am, I suppose …’
The door opened. Antonia expected it would be Ella wearing a new dress.
But it was Doctor Klein who entered the room.
He was wearing a dress.