This second man was Captain Usher.
A couple also stood waiting on the terrace and these I knew must be the Chandlers: the brother-in-law of the murdered man and his wife. Robert Chandler was a bald man whose head went in slightly at the middle like a peanut shell; his wife was a round and pretty woman in a lilac dress with a train. They were both somewhere in the middle forties, which made them about of an age with Usher.
Of John Lambert there was no sign.
‘But they told us not to dress,’ the wife was saying, in a tone of voice I’d not heard from her before, for it seemed to hold real fear. We were approaching two avenues made by dark firs that had been cut into cones like witches’ hats. Which one to choose? Would there be a right one and a wrong one? You could bloody well bet there would be.
But before we reached the trees, an advance party approached us: a chambermaid and a manservant of some sort – two servants kept back from Scarborough. Both carried trays holding bottles and glasses. They closed on us and then divided, the parlourmaid making towards the wife, the manservant heading my way.
I realised that he was the servant I’d seen that morning, the amiable one who’d directed me to the gardener’s cottage. He no longer looked horsy, but like an expert on wines.
‘Hock or claret, sir?’ he said.
I took a claret because it was nearest. But I felt I moved too fast, because the man said, ‘Or there’s champagne at the table, sir?’
Looking over, I saw a small table covered by a white cloth, and over-crowded with bottles and ice buckets. I had the notion that the four people standing around it and waiting for us were all adults, and that the wife and I were children. Evidently the four had all eaten supper, and we had received an invitation of an inferior sort after all, and I knew this would go hard with the wife. I knew also that her nervousness and embarrassment on this account would far exceed in her any anxiety about any murderous doings.
We were not approaching the terrace by the two proper walkways, but had somehow ended up going haphazard over the grass. Having drunk off my claret, I found that I was now making towards the hosts with an already empty glass, which also didn’t seem quite etiquette. The wife, of course, carried no glass, since she was tee-total.
It was Chandler’s wife who was waiting to greet me at the margin of the terrace. Do not on any account say, ‘I see that you do yourselves pretty well here,’ I told myself. Do not say, ‘This is laying on luxury.’
She shook my hand, she might even have curtsied; she said something I didn’t quite catch and then, after a long beat of silence, I heard myself saying, ‘Lovely place you have here.’
Meanwhile Lydia was being greeted by the host, who said, ‘It is lovely to see you again,’ and the two ‘lovelys’ seemed to clash.
From the rear of the terrace, I heard a laugh from the Chief as he spoke to Usher, and it was not quite natural, not quite him. Had Usher got him under the gun? Had he bested him as he had bested me?
And where had the Chief got his bloody dinner suit from?
The hostess, who stood before me, was looking down at the ground. Beneath the folds of her dress, she moved one of her feet, as though testing the bricks beneath. She looked up again, and a ruby necklace rose on the slopes of her white bosom as she took a deep breath. I had the idea that she was at once very distant and very near, and that she was a little squiffed. She then spoke all in a flurry:
‘We had such a friendly talk earlier on at the village with your wife, Mr Stringer. She said she was absolutely just dying to see some Chinese lanterns, and – anything to oblige!’
She turned and smiled with arm outstretched, presenting the lanterns of which there was now one fewer, the scorched one having burnt right out. I looked from it towards the Chief, who had certainly noticed me, but had not yet given me any acknowledgement. Mrs Chandler, spotting the direction of my glance, said, ‘You won’t believe it but those two are talking about camels.’
As the manservant poured more claret for both of us, Mrs Chandler said something about how the two men had been in Africa, so what could you expect? There was practically nothing in Africa but camels. Then the host, Robert Chandler, came over with his arm in Lydia’s.
I looked at Lydia’s white-gloved hand, and there was a glass of champagne there, and the sight was so all-of-a-piece and so elegant that for a moment the shock did not register. As I looked on, she drained off the rest of the glass and shot me a look that clearly said, ‘You put away gallons of alcohol every week, so why shouldn’t I take a glass now and again?’ I understood straightaway that it was the shame of not being invited to the meal that had made her do it, but the sight of the glass so knocked me that I said to the host: