John watched Count Jules drive off in a big blue Citröen, then he turned about and looked up at Christina’s villa. It was now about a quarter-past twelve, but there was no sign of her in the garden or at those windows of the house that he could glimpse between the umbrella-pines; so it looked as if she had not yet finished her packing. Picking up the empty glasses, he stumped up the path with them, and collected the lunch basket. Then, as he left the house, he saw that she had come out just ahead of him and was now halfway down to her terrace; so they met in the road.
Assuming that she had not seen Count Jules, John decided that to make any mention of his visit would be to give her needless cause for anxiety; so he greeted her with a smile and said, ‘I think we’ll go towards Agay, then turn inland. If you don’t mind an hour’s trudge uphill, there is a lovely view from the lowest spur of the ridge.’
She nodded. ‘We will go wherever you like. But tell me about your visitor. I was ready to start at twelve o’clock, as we arranged, but I saw him with you on the terrace; so I thought it wiser to remain under cover till he had gone. What did he want?’
‘He said it was just a friendly call; and he enquired most tenderly about your health.’
‘I bet he didn’t come all the way from St Tropez only for that. Please be honest with me, John. Now that I have told you everything I can about myself, it wouldn’t be fair of you to keep me in the dark. I would much rather know about it if you have reason to believe that they are plotting anything fresh against me.’
On reconsideration, he decided that she was right, and, if warned, would be additionally careful in watching her every step. So, as they walked at an easy pace along the broad, curving road, flanked with occasional stone balustrades surmounted by urns brimming with geraniums and small yellow-striped cactus, he gave her the full story of his recent interview. When he had done she said with a shrug: ‘He really must be crazy to have thought that you might pay him twelve hundred pounds to leave me alone.’
‘You must remember that although Jules was educated in England he is very much a Frenchman, and has the typical Frenchman’s outlook on women,’ John told her. ‘Custom and lack of inclination combine to prevent them from developing the sort of friendships that English people like ourselves enjoy in the normal course of events. They regard women solely from the point of view of sex, and divide them into two categories—those whose circumstances readily invite an amusing love-affair, and those who are in no position to offer such an attraction. To anyone of Jules’s nationality and class it is unthinkable that a chap like myself might have an affair with a young unmarried girl; because she falls into category number two. It is not entirely a matter of principle that restrains them from entering on such affairs, but also because they would be bored to tears. They regard it as essential that their mistresses should be sexually experienced and take the matter as lightly as they do themselves, so that they run no danger of becoming permanently entangled. Therefore, Jules would argue that, since I should get little fun out of seducing you, and landing myself with a packet of trouble afterwards, the only reason for my interest in you must be that I want to marry you.’
‘I have always thought that in France it was the other way about, and that in a marriage contract it was the girl’s parents who had to put up the money.’
‘Ah, but you’ve forgotten that you are an heiress. If your old man owns a controlling interest in Beddows Agricultural Tractors he must be worth a packet; and you are an only child. As Jules would see it, for my mother to put up twelve hundred to get you for me as a wife would be a jolly good bet.’
Christina laughed. ‘It is one I wouldn’t care to make. As I’ve told you, I really know awfully little about my father’s private life. I don’t think he has married again, but he might have. Anyhow, by his mistresses he may have had children of whom he is much fonder than he is of me. It is quite on the cards that when he dies the bulk of his money will go to people I have never heard of, and that he will leave me only a few hundred a year to keep me from actual want.’
While they were talking they had reached the little village of Dramont, and after walking over to look at the memorial, which commemorated the landing of the Americans there on August the 15th, 1944, they took the by-road that led up into the Esterel.
Their way now lay through the pine forest, which here and there had clearings in it of a few acres devoted to intensive cultivation. In most of them stood a lemon-washed farmhouse, and the land was occupied by crops of fruit, vegetables and flowers, all growing on series of terraces which had been laboriously constructed out of the hillside and were kept in place by walls of rough-hewn stone. On some there were rows of orange, lemon and tangerine trees, or short bare-stalked vines, on others globe artichokes, young beans and primeurs of all sorts for the Paris markets; while many were small fields of carnations.
The going was stiff; so they did not talk very much, and then only of trivial things, such as the thrifty care with which the peasants cultivated every available inch of their soil, and of how utterly different the scene was from any that could be found in England at that time of year. In an hour they had covered barely three miles, but they then came out on the summit of the lowest foothill of the range, and paused there to admire the view.
To one side of the road lay an orchard of ancient olive-trees, their gnarled trunks and grey-green leaves standing out in charming contrast to the yellower green of the short grass in which they had been planted a century or more ago. In the hush of midday, with sunlight dappling the grass through leaves unstirred by a breath of wind, it was a truly sylvan spot, having that spell-like quality which made them almost expect that a nymph or faun would peep out at them from behind one of the trees at any moment. Instinctively feeling that they could find no more delightful place in which to picnic, they turned into the orchard without exchanging a word, and, sitting down under one of the trees a little way from the road, unpacked their lunch.
When they had satisfied their first hunger, John asked Christina what sort of a time she had had at her finishing school in Paris, and after describing the life there she summed it up as more interesting but not so much fun as that she had had in Somerset. In Paris the only lessons had been French grammar and the study of the Arts; the girls had been taken to the opera, the Salon, concerts, classical plays, the best films, special dress shows for jeunes filles, the museums and all the places of historical interest. She had enjoyed all that; but the mistresses had been much stricter and the girls less friendly than at the school of domestic science, and she had greatly missed the fine old mansion that housed it, with its park, swimming-pool and lovely garden; the paper-chases and cricket in the summer, and in winter the bicycle rides on Saturdays into the local town for tea and shopping.
John had never been in Somerset, but he knew Paris well, particularly the intellectual side of life there; so they talked for a while of painting, ballet and books. The extent of her knowledge, and especially the wideness of her reading, rather surprised him; but she explained that never having been home for the holidays she had had much more time than most girls in which to devour her favourite authors and dip into all sorts of unusual subjects.
In turn she asked him about his work, and he told her that on the whole he thoroughly enjoyed it; but that like every other business it had its irritating moments. In the previous year his directors had given him a real plum—a Canadian millionaire who wanted a permanent home in London, fully equipped regardless of expense, but did not wish to be bothered with any of the details, or even be informed of the colours of the rooms, until he walked into it; but that sort of thing did not happen often. Most of his clients were people compelled by taxation to move from country houses that their families had occupied for generations into medium-sized West End flats. The majority of them had taste; so they were usually not difficult to deal with, and the major trouble in such cases was generally that the furniture they wished to retain was much too big for the rooms; so it often spoiled the final décor. The real headaches were the black-marketeers and other nouveaux riches, who went round on their own, buying ghastly suites or fake antiques, guaranteed to make any interior look garish or pretentious. Yet he declared that he would not for the world be in any other business, as every day brought its new problem that kept his mind alert, and now and then an achievement which gave him real artistic satisfaction.
‘Do you ever have to do kitchens?’ Christina enquired.
‘Yes, sometimes.’
‘How many sinks do you put in a new scullery?’
‘Why, one, of course,’ he replied promptly. ‘In these days of small staffs no one would want more.’
‘Then if I ever need a kitchen designed I shan’t employ you,’ she laughed. ‘It makes the work infinitely lighter if one has two sinks side by side; and they should both be on a much higher level than most architects place them, to save backache from bending unnecessarily far over.’
‘It is certainly a thought,’ he admitted in a slightly chastened tone. ‘I suppose you got the idea from that domestic place you were at?’
‘Yes: our kitchen expert had learned her stuff in America, where most wives have to do their own housework. It is scandalous how far behind we are in Britain; and in France things are even worse, in spite of the good cooking. For years past all housework has continued to be far more laborious than it need be. If I ever have a home of my own I shall install all the new labour-saving devices. I’ll have toe hollows instead of protruding bases along the floor level of the cupboards, so that the paint is not knocked off, compo-rubber sinks and draining-boards to save breakage, laundry chutes, a mix-and-whip, an electric dish-washer, and one of those lovely things to throw the garbage into that chews up even bones.’
‘We had better go into partnership. You could do all the expensive gadgets on the domestic side, while I crib ideas like the arrangement of those bookcases we saw at the de Grasses last night.’
Her expression immediately became serious, and she asked, ‘Do you think there is any risk that they may try to get hold of me by force?’
‘I doubt it,’ he replied with a confidence he was far from feeling. ‘In any case, you may be sure that we shall do our utmost to protect you. Still, it is a possibility that they might lure you away by some trick, and, as a matter of fact, while we were trudging up the hill, an hour back, I had an idea about that.’
‘Did you? Tell me what it was.’
He hesitated a second. ‘Well, if by chance they did manage to entice you away, we shouldn’t be on a very good wicket. I mean, if we had to go to the police and ask them to trace you, they would naturally want to know what authority we had for making such a request, particularly if things pointed to your having gone off of your own free will. They would get down to the job quickly enough if we were relatives of yours, but they might refuse to act at all if they took the view that, as we were only acquaintances, we had no right to stick our noses into your business.’
‘I see what you mean; but I don’t see how that can be got over.’
‘It can be. I think the germ of the idea came into my mind when we were nattering about marriage. Mama and I could raise Cain, and get them running round in circles, if I could say that you were my fiancée.’
Christina’s big brown eyes were round with astonishment as she turned them on him. ‘You … you aren’t making me a proposal of marriage, are you?’
He had been lying full length on the grass, but now he sat up and looked at her with a grin. ‘Sorry, but I’m afraid I’m not. Although I suppose it is presumptuous of me even to infer that I might have raised false hopes in your maidenly breast. I only had in mind that stupid old saying “marriages are made in heaven and engagements to be broken”. Ours, if you thought the idea worth pursuing, would be only for the “duration of the conflict”, and afterwards we should go our own separate ways, seeking more suitable partners to dig our hooks into in earnest. What do you say?’
‘It is a bit shattering to have all one’s girlish dreams about first proposals rendered farcical like this,’ she said, half seriously. ‘But I do see your point about an engagement giving you the right to get a hue and cry going, should I disappear. I’d feel bound to make it a condition, though, that we should tell your mother that there is nothing serious between us.’
‘Of course. And Conky Bill, too. I wouldn’t like either of them to think later that I had bilked you. But we ought to put up a bit of a show to establish our state of bliss in the minds of the retainers.’
She gave him a rather dubious look. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘Why, the usual concrete evidence that you are about to be made into an honest woman.’ As he spoke, he drew a gold signet ring from the little finger of his left hand and held it up. ‘Here! Let me slip this on your engagement finger. It was my father’s, and I regard it as one of my few treasures. So for God’s sake don’t lose it. You can flash it in front of that old Catalan woman of yours and Angele. Tell them that I mean to buy you something more spectacular when we get home, but that in the meantime it is the symbol of my undying love.’
‘All right then,’ she laughed, and held out her left hand. It was shapely, but large, and he had considerable difficulty in working the ring over her knuckle. At length he succeeded, and as it slipped down to the waist of the finger he muttered: ‘That’s done it; but you have got big hands for a girl, haven’t you?’
She flushed to the roots of her hair and retorted angrily, ‘Yes! And large feet, and a snub nose; so you’re jolly lucky not to have got me for keeps.’
His eyes showed surprise and immediate contrition. ‘Damn it all, Christina!’ he exclaimed. Then, putting out both hands, he took her by the shoulders and looked straight in her face. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. I swear I didn’t! You’ve got the loveliest eyes I’ve ever seen, and if you only knew it, that funny nose of yours is one of your best features. It gives you an individuality that awfully few girls have got.’
‘You don’t mean that. You are just trying to be nice to me now, to make up for having been unintentionally nasty.’
‘I do mean it. And your lips are as soft as any I have ever kissed.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘You know, when one gets engaged to a girl it is usual to kiss her. That’s always done, even in boy-and-girl affairs that are not intended to come to anything.’ Next second, before she had a chance to resist, he slipped his arms round her, pulled her to him, and kissed her firmly on the mouth.
For a long moment she lay passive in his embrace, then he withdrew his lips, smiled down at her and said, ‘You are not doing your best, darling. That’s not a patch on the kisses you gave me the other night.’
Instantly she pulled away from him. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she cried, ‘How horrid of you to remind me of that!’
‘Why?’ he asked, momentarily at a loss. ‘You are the same girl, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in what you did.’
‘I was not myself then, and you know it.’
He gave a little shrug. ‘If you take my advice, then, should a chap ever make love to you seriously and you want him for a husband, you will let him kiss you only when you are, as you put it, not yourself.’
Christina’s cheeks were scarlet as she murmured unhappily, ‘But it isn’t normal. It’s not decent. No girl could do that sort of thing and not be ashamed of it afterwards—at least not until she was married.’
Smiling slightly, John shook his head. ‘My dear, I’m sure you really believe that, but you are talking the most utter rot. I give you my word of honour that grown-up people who are going places together nearly always kiss that way—even when they haven’t the faintest intention of getting married. There is no harm in it, and it’s part of the fun of life. You might just as well say that, because as children we have no urge to smoke or drink, it is wicked of us to take to it when we get older. Learning to kiss properly, and enjoying it, is just one of the normal processes of becoming a man or woman. You did enjoy being kissed by me the other night, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Christina whispered. ‘I … I … of course I did.’
‘Then stop being a baby, and let me kiss you again.’ As he spoke, he drew her gently into his arms and this time kissed her parted lips.
From the distance came the faint clink of metal against small stones as a peasant hoed one of his terrace plots, and once a seagull circled overhead; but no one came to disturb them. John sat with his back against the bole of the tree, his right arm round Christina, and her head lay on his shoulder. Few places could have been nearer the ideal for a first lesson in kissing, and once Christina let herself go she proved an apt pupil; but John was careful to keep matters on the level of a game not to be taken seriously. He had set out to take the girl’s mind off the grim anxieties which he knew must lie at the back of it. That he had succeeded was clear, and he was thoroughly enjoying the process, but he said nothing which she could take as an indication that he was falling in love with her, as he feared that being so inexperienced she might think him in earnest and later, perhaps, suffer from disappointment.
As the sunny afternoon wore on they became drowsy and, still embraced, fell asleep. John was the first to wake and, glancing at his watch, saw that it was after five o’clock. With a gentle kiss he aroused Christina, and said: ‘Wake up, my pretty. It’s time for us to be going. We ought to have started before, really.’
As she disentangled herself and began to tidy her hair she shivered and replied, ‘Yes, I suppose we ought. Although the sun is still shining, it has turned quite cold.’
‘At this time of the year it always does at this hour. The sun loses its power and the wind changes, bringing the icy currents down from the snow on top of the mountains. More elderly people die of pneumonia on this coast than anywhere else in the world. They only have to once forget to take an overcoat with them if they are going to be out after five o’clock, and they’ve had it. I don’t wonder you’re chilly in that light frock. Come on now! We’ll step out and get your circulation going.’
She stood up and brushed down her skirt, while he crammed the empty bottle and glasses back into the basket. Two minutes later they were on their way down the hill, but its steepness prevented their pace from being much faster than that at which they had come up; so it was well past six when they arrived back at Christina’s villa to collect the things she had packed that morning.
John carried the suitcase across, and in Molly’s sitting-room they found her with Colonel Verney. He was a tall, rather thin, man, and, as he stood up to be introduced to Christina, would have appeared even taller but for a slight stoop that was habitual to him. His hair was going grey, parted in the centre, and brushed smoothly back. His face was longish, with a firm mouth and determined chin; but the other features were dominated by the big aggressive nose that had earned him the nickname of Conky Bill—or, as most of his friends called him for short, C.B. His eyebrows were thick and prawn-like. Below them his grey eyes had the curious quality of seeming to look right through one. He usually spoke very quietly, in an almost confidential tone, and gave the pleasing impression that there were very few things out of which he did not derive a certain amount of amusement.
To Christina he said, ‘Well, young lady, I hear you are being pursued by bad men, but I usually eat a couple for breakfast; so you must lead me to them. Perhaps we can have a little talk after dinner, then I’ll have a better idea how to set my traps.’
Christina smiled in reply. ‘I don’t think there is much I can tell you that I haven’t already told Mrs Fountain, but I’ll answer any questions you like.’
Taking her by the arm, Molly said, ‘Come along, my dear. Last night we had to pop you into bed just anyhow; so I’ll come up with you to your room and see that you have everything you want.’
C.B. and John had already smiled a greeting at one another; so the latter followed the two women out of the room with Christina’s bag. When he returned two minutes later, the tall Colonel said: ‘Well, young feller! How’s the world been treating you?’
‘I’ve no complaints, sir, thanks,’ John replied cheerfully. ‘And it’s very nice to have you with us again.’
‘To tell the truth, I was delighted when your mother rang up. I was due to spend the next few days getting out a lot of tiresome statistics, and it gave me just the excuse I needed to unload the job on to one of my stooges.’
‘I’m very glad you could come, sir. This seems a most extraordinary business, and I can’t make head or tail of it.’
‘You mean the Black Magic slant to it, eh? Well, I don’t suppose you would. Those boys are experts at keeping their lights under bushels; so the general public rarely hears anything about them—except from an occasional article appearing in the press, and they generally write that off as nonsense.’
‘May I give you another drink, sir? Then perhaps you would tell me something about it.’
‘Do, John.’ C.B. began to refill a very clean, long-stemmed pipe. ‘Mine’s a gin-and-French. But why so much of the “sir” all of a sudden? I know I’m an old fogey, but you’ve known me long enough to call me C.B. You always used to when you were a little chap.’
John grinned. ‘Ah! But I’ve done my military service since then, and we were taught that we should always call the Colonel “sir” at least three times before slapping him on the back.’
‘Not a bad precept either. Come and sit down, and tell me what you make of this girl Christina, and the set-up next door.’
‘I don’t think there is much to tell about her villa.’ John handed the Colonel his drink, then perched himself on the sofa. ‘The old gardener who looks after the place and caretakes when it is empty has been there for years. Maria, the Catalan bonne, is a rather surly type, but as she was engaged by Christina’s father there doesn’t seem any reason to suppose that there is anything fishy about her. We know definitely now that the de Grasses are simply acting as the Canon’s agents, but—’
‘How do you know?’ put in C.B. quietly.
‘Because Jules de Grasse told me so himself,’ John replied, and went on to give an account of the visit he had received that morning.
‘Sounds good enough—on the face of it,’ commented the Colonel. ‘All right. Carry on.’
‘I was only going to add that, while we haven’t the ghost of an idea why the Canon wants to get hold of Christina, I believe we would be more than halfway to solving the whole problem if we could find out what is wrong with the girl herself.’
‘Good reasoning, John. Your mother is convinced that it is a case of possession: but what do you think?’
‘I’m damned if I know. There can be no question about these changes in her personality. I’ve seen them for myself. During the daytime she is a nice kid—straightforward, good-natured, and as far as worldliness goes you wouldn’t put her age as much over seventeen. But at night she becomes utterly different—bold, sensual as a cat and, according to her own account, evil-minded and malicious. If we were still living in mediaeval times I suppose one would regard possession by the Devil as a perfectly reasonable explanation; but it is a bit much to swallow in these days, isn’t it?’
‘For you, perhaps; but not for me. I’ve seen scores of such cases, John; and at this very moment there are hundreds of people in our asylums whose apparent lunacy is really due to an evil spirit—or, to call it by its right name, which I prefer, a demon—having got into their bodies.’
‘Well,’ John gave a faint smile, ‘as you and Mother are both so positive that such things still happen I suppose I must accept it that they do. But if what you say about the asylums is correct, why is no attempt ever made to get the devils out of all these poor wretches?’
‘Because the modern medicos refuse to recognise the facts. Even if they did they wouldn’t know how to set about it; and for that matter very few other people would either.’
‘When Mother and I were talking about it last night, she seemed to think you would.’
‘Lord bless you, no! I’m no exorcist. I’ve never dabbled in Magic—Black or White—in my life. I regard it as much too dangerous.’
‘Does that mean you won’t be able to do anything for Christina?’
‘That depends.’ Conky Bill’s voice became low and slightly conspiratorial. ‘If I can get a half-Nelson on the Black who has bewitched her, I could. Even a few facts about minor breaches of the law might enable me to pull a fast one. There is nothing that these birds dislike so much as the police taking an interest in their affairs, and given something to go on there would be a good chance for me to exert enough pressure on them to get the spell taken off.’
‘You think Mother’s right, then, about her having been bewitched?’
‘I am accepting that theory for the moment.’
‘But why in the world should they pick on a girl like Christina? She has never been mixed up in spiritualism, or anything of that kind.’
‘Ask me another, young feller. But I expect we shall find that there is a tie-up of some sort. On the other hand, any girl who has so few intimate relationships is always particularly vulnerable. Nine times out of ten they are the ones who disappear; because they have no friends and relatives to start a hue and cry about them. If those people at the place where she was at in Paris had been crooks, she might have been shipped off to Buenos Aires, and her father would have been none the wiser for months afterwards.’
‘It looks to me as if he got in first; and it is the very fact that he got wise to it that something pretty nasty was being planned against her that accounts for her present situation.’
C.B. nodded. ‘Yes, you’ve got something there.’
‘Do you think their object is to White Slave her?’
‘No; although if they did get hold of her she would be a darn sight better off in a brothel.’
‘What exactly is their game, then?’
‘They are always on the hunt for neophytes. Satan is a greedy master, and to retain his favour they need a constant supply of new bodies to defile and souls to corrupt. The more victims they can offer up, the greater becomes their power.’
‘Apart from that, is Mother right in what she told me last night, about their being a menace to all established Governments that stand for freedom and decency?’
‘Yes, if she was speaking of the high-direction of the show, she was. Of course, there are lots of little outer circles, or covens, as they are called. They are generally run by ordinary crooks who have muscled-in on the game. Most of the time their object is blackmail. They get hold of pederasts, lesbians and over-sexed people of all ages, and provide them with the chance to indulge their secret vices. Then in due course they put on the squeeze and make quite a bit of money by it. Pedalling dope is another of their activities and generally proves a pretty useful sideline.’
C.B. paused to fiddle with his pipe, then went on, ‘But the big shots are right up and away above that sort of thing. In most cases I doubt if they even know the chiefs of the little covens. Anyhow, they leave it to their subordinates to supervise them and pick likely lads to form new ones. Their job is to use occult forces to destroy good influences. Their usual line is to cause the illness or death at a time of crisis of the key man who might be able to tide it over; or, alternatively, to produce conditions which will favour some unscrupulous individual getting control of the situation. The best example I can give you of an ace-high Black Magician in modern times is the monk Rasputin. He did more than all the Bolsheviks put together to bring about the Russian revolution; and I don’t need to tell you the extent of the evil that has brought to Russia, and may yet bring to the rest of the world.’
Molly rejoined them at that moment, and as John got up to get her a drink she enquired how he had enjoyed his day.
‘Oh, all right,’ he replied casually. ‘We found a nice place to picnic, but as a matter of fact we slept for most of the afternoon.’
‘Dear me, you must have been bored then.’ With a smile she turned to C.B. ‘This business really is rather hard luck on Johnny. Three days of his holiday have gone already, and he hasn’t had a moment yet to look up his old friends or hit any of the high spots along the coast. I think he is being very sweet to devote all his time to this poor girl.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t find her as boring as you think,’ C.B. smiled back; and, standing up, he carefully removed a long brown hair from the open collar of John’s pale blue sweat shirt.
‘Well played, Sherlock,’ John laughed. ‘But don’t let that little souvenir give either of you any wrong ideas. It signifies only the sealing of the sort of deal that Hitler used to call “A Pact of Eternal Friendship” when it suited his book to enter into a political understanding with someone for a few weeks.’ He told them then about his phoney engagement to Christina, and the reason that had prompted him to suggest it.
‘Now I’m here, I’ll be able to get the French police moving, should we need them,’ C.B. commented, ‘but all the same it was quite a sound idea.’
Then Molly added, ‘Christina showed me your father’s ring and explained why she was wearing it directly we got upstairs. She told me, too, about Count Jules’s visit after I left this morning.’
‘John has just given me particulars of that.’ C.B. stretched out his long legs, and went on thoughtfully, ‘In view of young de Grasse’s threat, I think we ought to set a watch tonight, just in case they attempt a snatch. We could put an armchair on the landing outside her room. I need very little sleep, so I can easily sit up reading until two. Then if John relieved me until five, I’d come on again then. By seven your bonne will be about, so I could get another couple of hours shut-eye before breakfast. How about it, John; are you game to do the three hours before dawn?’
‘Sure. Longer if you like. After all, now she is my fiancée I don’t have to stay outside her door, do I?’
‘Any nonsense of that kind, and I’ll pack you off back to England,’ his mother said severely.
He gave a mock sigh and shot an injured look at the Colonel. ‘You see, sir, how old-fashioned she is in her ideas about the latitude that should be allowed to engaged couples. I do wish you would try your hand at educating her up a bit for me.’
Both of them picked up the innuendo. C.B. let his gaze fall to his big feet. Molly flushed and said quickly, ‘I really came down to say that if you want to change tonight, it is time we went up.’
The Colonel levered himself out of his chair. ‘It is just as you like, my dear. As I always have a tub before dinner, I find it no more trouble, and considerably more enlivening to the mind, to get into le smoking, as they call it out here.’
‘I know you do,’ she smiled, ‘so while you are with us I have put dinner back to eight-thirty. But you and John will have to share the guests’ bathroom, and it is nearly half-past seven now.’
Finishing up their drinks, they followed her out. An hour later they reassembled.
John was first down, and having switched on the lights he mixed another round of cocktails. When his mother joined him he noted with secret amusement that she was considerably more made-up than usual, and was wearing a very pretty frock that he had not seen before. C.B. came in a moment later, gave her one appraising glance, and said: ‘Molly, my dear, you’re looking positively stunning. If it wasn’t for John, here, I’d stake my oath that you couldn’t be a day over thirty.’
She gave a happy laugh. ‘Well, they say a woman is as old as she looks and a man is as old as he feels, so perhaps we had better leave it at that. But you’re not looking so bad yourself. I don’t wonder you like to change in the evenings. Dark, well-cut clothes instead of those baggy things you wear in the daytime take at least ten years off you.’
‘You sweet children,’ purred John, as he handed them their cocktails. ‘How I wish I were your age; then I should have so many new experiences to look forward to.’
‘You insolent pup!’ C.B. made a pretence of cuffing him; and they continued laughing together until the gong went.
‘Christina has been an awfully long time dressing,’ Molly remarked, ‘but we will give her a few minutes’ grace.’
They shared out the remaining contents of the shaker, but still Christina had not appeared; so Molly said to John, ‘I think you had better slip up and find out how much longer your fiancée is going to spend titivating herself for your benefit.’
‘Right-oh!’ he nodded, and, leaving the room, ran upstairs. A minute later he came pounding down again, shouting as he came, ‘She isn’t there! Her room’s empty! She’s gone!’