A Dark and Stormy Night Read online

  ‘Aha! You did look it up! Well, I’ll just bet our hosts are dying to give us all the details. I tell everybody about our house, and it’s not at all in the same league.’ Monkswell Lodge, the house where Alan and I live in Sherebury, was built in the early 1600s as a gatehouse for the man who bought what used to be Sherebury Abbey before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. It’s a wonderful house and we love it, but it’s always been a modest dwelling. Branston Abbey was a showplace.

  The stairs were broad and shallow, easy even for my not-quite-perfect knees. They were feeling better, anyway, after my bath. The house was, true to Lynn’s word, filled with a gentle warmth that spoke of efficient central heating, and when we followed the sound of voices to what was probably called the drawing room, we found the fire lit and the temperature almost too warm. Several people were gathered in the room, chatting and drinking various beverages.

  ‘There you are,’ called Joyce. ‘Found your way, I see. I keep meaning to have maps of the house printed up, but I keep forgetting. It really isn’t complicated, anyway, once you figure out the basic plan. So sit and have some tea – or whatever you’d prefer – and let me introduce everybody.’

  Evidently the kitchen crisis had been solved. The meal laid out on several trays was an elaborate, Ritz-style spread of the kind I didn’t know anyone ever did in private homes these days. Alan and I sat down next to Lynn and Tom, and I looked dubiously at the array of sandwiches and scones and cakes. ‘It’s all right, D.,’ said Tom, sotto voce. ‘Dinner isn’t till eight. Eat all you want.’

  Well, I wasn’t going to do that. I engage in a perpetual struggle with my love of carbohydrates. Besides, I’d lost some weight after my surgery, and I didn’t want to gain it all back. But I accepted a cup of tea from my hostess – ‘Yes, milk and two lumps, please’ – and took a couple of tiny sandwiches and a scone. Lunch was a distant memory, and I was truly hungry.

  ‘Now, let me introduce you to everyone,’ said Joyce, when we’d eaten and drunk our fill. ‘You know Tom and Lynn. And this is my husband, Jim. Jim, this is Dorothy Martin and her husband Alan Nesbitt. We’ll all have to behave ourselves this weekend; Alan’s a retired police VIP.’

  My husband, who was a chief constable for many years, was used to this kind of remark and took it with equanimity. Jim Moynihan smiled and hoisted a teacup in salute, as another, very graceful and good-looking man approached.

  ‘And I, my dear lady, cannot wait another moment to meet you. Michael Leonev, at your service.’ He pronounced it Mee-kha-ail, but his accent reminded me of the Beatles and his hair was blond. I must have looked sceptical, because he took my hand, kissed it, and grinned. ‘Between you and me, luv, Mike Leonard from Liverpool, but all the best dancers are Russian, so—’

  ‘Royal Ballet,’ I said, a faint memory surfacing. ‘Swan Lake. I saw the reviews, though I didn’t get to town to see a performance.’

  ‘Yes, well, next time I hope to do Siegfried, but Von Rothbart isn’t a bad role. More acting than dancing, actually, and usually done by someone much older.’ Mike, or Michael, frowned, which was unwise. Lines appeared that made me wonder if he was really too young to play the evil sorcerer, but then he gave me a winsome smile and looked like a boy again.

  Joyce deftly disengaged us and led us to the two men sitting in front of the fire, who rose as we approached. The smaller one extended his hand. ‘Ed Walinski. Glad to meet you.’

  ‘You’re American!’ I said, pleased. He looked the part, too. He was dressed like most of the men in slacks and a sweater, but the clothes looked more Brooks Brothers than Savile Row. Of modest height, he nevertheless looked as if he could hold his own against most challengers. At the moment, though, his round face was creased in a smile.

  ‘Of Polish descent, with a touch of Irish and some German somewhere. And that’s about as American as they come!’

  ‘Ed’s going to do a book about this house,’ said Joyce with obvious pride. ‘We’re very excited, because no one’s ever done a proper history of the place, and certainly not an illustrated one.’

  ‘Oh, how stupid of me!’ I slapped my forehead. ‘You’re that Walinski – the photographer! I’ve admired your work for years, and your narratives are just as good as your pictures. Are you going to take pictures of the fireworks?’

  ‘Sure! Fireworks over that roofline – wow! And I can afford to waste shots – I brought tons of film.’

  ‘You’re not a convert to digital, then?’

  ‘Yeah, for some things. Snapshots, Bertha-in-front-of-the-Parthenon, that kind of junk. And I use it for test shots, to make absolutely sure the picture’s set up right. I’ll use it for the preliminary house shots a lot, because that’s going to be tricky, particularly those gargoyles. I may have to spend the whole weekend just figuring out how to get up there for a good shot.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Joyce firmly. ‘Aside from the pyrotechnics, you’re going to spend the weekend having a good time and getting to know the house a little. And Mr Upshawe, here, is going to help. Dorothy and Alan, meet Laurence Upshawe, the former owner of Branston Abbey.’

  Upshawe, tall, thin, graying at the temples and looking almost too much like an English landowner, gravely shook our hands.

  ‘Oh, my, how could you ever bear to sell such a wonderful place?’ I gushed, and then could have kicked myself. If the man had had to part with his ancestral home to pay death duties or something awful like that . . .

  But he smiled. ‘You mustn’t think it was a frightful sacrifice, or anything of that sort. Actually, you know, I didn’t grow up here, and I was never terribly fond of the house. Branston Abbey belonged to my father’s cousin. My father inherited it because his cousin’s son died quite young, and Father was the next in line. The estate was entailed then, you see, and Father was thrilled when it came to him. He had visited the place often as a child, and he loved every gable and gargoyle with quite an unreasonable passion. But entail’s been done away with, so when my father left the house to me, I was free to do with it as I liked.’

  ‘And what you liked was to sell it to the Moynihans and go to – Australia, was it?’

  ‘New Zealand,’ he said with the patient air of one who grows tired of explaining the differences between two widely separated countries. ‘But in point of fact, I sold Branston Abbey—’

  He was interrupted when the door to the room was flung open and a couple marched in, puffing and stamping and complaining noisily.

  The woman wore several layers of sweaters. The top one looked expensive, as did her wool slacks, but the net effect was lumpy and shapeless. The man was dressed in a red plaid flannel shirt over a rather dirty yellow sweatshirt, over a black turtleneck, with goodness knows what underneath that. His pants were liberally splashed with mud, as were his L.L. Bean boots. He had in one corner of his mouth a large cigar from which issued a cloud of foul smoke.

  ‘Holy shit, tea you’re drinking!’ he roared, removing the cigar for a moment. ‘That stuff’s for old grannies and pansies. Gimme some Scotch, Jim. It’s cold enough out there to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Why anybody lives in this godforsaken country’s beyond me, let alone in a draughty old wreck like this. Cheers, everybody.’ He drank down at a gulp half the stiff drink Jim had silently handed him, while the rest of us sat dumb.

  Joyce cleared her throat. ‘Dorothy and Alan, my sister Julie Harrison and her husband Dave.’

  TWO

  The party broke up quickly after that. Alan left with the photographer, after getting my assurance that I’d much rather the two of them toured the house without me. The dancer, whose eyebrows had risen nearly into his hair, did an elaborate stage shrug and performed a neat series of pirouettes out the door. Upshawe murmured something inaudible and drifted away, and I had only a moment to wish I’d gone with Alan and the photographer, after all, when Tom took me on one arm and Lynn by the other. ‘The ladies are tired, Joyce. I’m sure you’ll excuse us.’

  ‘I’m not in the least
tired,’ I said when we were out of there. ‘But thanks for rescuing me. I couldn’t figure out how to escape tactfully.’

  Lynn sighed. ‘Tact isn’t really necessary anymore. Joyce is used to Dave and the effect he has on civilized people.’

  ‘And she’s thoroughly fed up with him,’ added Tom. ‘Are you up to the stairs, D., or do you want to use the lift? I warn you, you have to go back through the drawing room to get there.’

  ‘The stairs, by all means. They’re not at all steep, and up is always easier than down, and I wouldn’t go back in there if the alternative was climbing to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Is he always like that, or is he drunk?’

  ‘Not drunk yet, probably, but he soon will be,’ said Tom. ‘And yes, he’s always like that, drunk or sober. I met him something over twenty-four hours ago, and the acquaintance has already been about a week too long. And his wife is just as bad.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘She didn’t say a word in there.’

  ‘She will,’ said Lynn, and I had seldom heard her sound so cool. ‘She’s a whiner, not a blowhard. She’ll be launched by now on a steady trickle of complaint about weak tea, dry sandwiches, the wrong kind of jam tarts, and hard chairs. I’m sure she’ll throw in a few jabs about the village, too. The essential message will be, if it’s English, it’s inferior. Dave agrees, but louder.’

  ‘So why did they come to visit, if they hate it so much?’ I had reached the top of the stairs and could stop concentrating on making my knees do what they were supposed to.

  ‘We haven’t figured that out yet,’ said Tom. ‘You still need an arm?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘We thought at first,’ said Lynn, ‘that they came to sponge on Joyce and Jim. But Dave keeps telling everyone how rich he is, how he could afford to retire young because he was smarter in business than everybody else. So either he’s lying or there’s some other reason they’re here. I don’t know how Joyce and Jim put up with them.’

  ‘Jim isn’t going to, much longer,’ said Tom. ‘I overheard him—’ he looked around and lowered his voice, ‘talking to Joyce earlier this afternoon, and he’s about had it. Says they can stay through the weekend, because of the big doings on the fifth, but after that he’s kicking them out. I think he’ll do it, too. I got the idea, from the tone of the conversation, that the two sisters have never hit it off, and one reason the Moynihans moved to England was to get away from the Harrisons. So I suspect he’ll happily give them their walking papers.’

  We had reached our bedroom. ‘Let’s go in and have some privacy,’ I suggested. ‘I guess there aren’t servants listening in every corner, like in the old books, but I’d feel more comfortable behind a good solid door.’

  We settled in front of the fire and Tom found some sherry in a cupboard. ‘Good hosts,’ he said, pouring us each a glass. ‘They think of everything for a guest’s comfort.’

  ‘Dorothy, it’s pathetic,’ said Lynn. ‘Joyce and Jim are so proud of their house. They’ve put so much time and effort into fixing it up – and money, my word, tons of money. Everything was to look authentic, but at the same time be modern and labour-saving. They went so far as to take out a perfectly good Aga, because it was an old solid-fuel one Joyce wasn’t sure she could make work right, and put in a state-of-the-art electric one – but specially designed to look just like the old ones. They wanted this first big party to be perfect. I gather they’ve been planning every detail for weeks. And then a couple of days ago sister Julie barged in with her impossible husband and went about alienating everybody in the house. Joyce was in a rage this morning over Dave’s criticisms of the house. He doesn’t know a thing about the subject, but that doesn’t keep him from holding forth. And Julie saw Mike yesterday making eyes at Laurence—’

  ‘I forget who Laurence is.’

  ‘Upshawe, who used to own the place. Such a nice, easygoing man, and absolutely brilliant – he’s a retired surgeon. And good-looking, even if he’s not very young. Anyway, Julie saw them, and made the most awful remarks. I won’t even repeat them, they’re so foul, but let’s just say they represented her views about gays, foreigners, dancers, and the English in general. And Laurence, poor dear, isn’t in the least interested, but he’s kind, and didn’t tell Mike to go peddle his papers. But Julie went straight to Joyce to tell her all about it.’

  ‘I’ll bet she just laughed. She looks like the unflappable sort.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t take it seriously – not in one sense. But she was upset all the same, because of Julie’s sheer malice. Julie actually tried to get Joyce to kick Mike out of the house for “flagrantly immoral behaviour”.’

  ‘When all he did was look at the man?’

  ‘That’s all. And half of that might have been acting. Mike’s a trifle . . . dramatic.’

  Some of my sherry went down the wrong way. ‘Yes, I’d noticed,’ I said when I could speak again. ‘A necessity in his profession, I’d have thought. And anyway, who cares, nowadays? Well, it’s all going to make for an uncomfortable weekend. I wonder if we—’

  ‘Oh, Dorothy, don’t think of leaving! For one thing, Tom and I need someone to talk to if everyone else stops speaking to anyone. For another, Joyce is almost at her wits’ end, and you and Alan can be counted on to behave yourselves. Besides, everyone is interesting except the Horrible Harrisons.’

  ‘I’d say Dave Harrison was interesting,’ said Tom thoughtfully. ‘In the sense of the old Chinese curse.’

  ‘It’s a strange mixture, certainly,’ I said, relaxing as the sherry took hold. ‘For an English country-house weekend, there’s a remarkable shortage of Brits. Let’s see.’ I began counting on my fingers ‘Two, four, six, seven Americans – no, eight, I forgot Walinski, the famous photographer – and just three Englishmen, the dancer – Mike – and Laurence Upshawe, and Alan. Oh, and the Bateses.’

  Alan came in just then. ‘Someone taking my name in vain? I’ll have one of those, Tom, if you’re pouring.’

  Tom poured Alan’s sherry and then went to put more wood on the fire, and I stretched my legs out to unkink my knees. ‘So did you enjoy your tour of the house, love? You weren’t very long about it.’

  Alan took a sip of his sherry. ‘The tour was curtailed by Mr Harrison, whom we encountered in the oldest part of the house, the only remaining part of the original Abbey. He imparted a great deal of misinformation about the building materials, style, and construction methods of the period, contrasting them unfavourably to the . . . er . . . dwellings he was responsible for building before he retired from business. I believe he called them “manufactured homes”. It seems an odd term.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘They’re houses built in trailer factories, using many of the same materials and methods. They aren’t bad-looking, some of them, but they tend to crumple like paper in bad storms like tornadoes and hurricanes. The mind boggles at the idea of comparing them with a building that’s stood for – what? – seven hundred years.’

  ‘That, in rather more colourful language, was what Walinski said. The disagreement became rather heated, whereupon Walinski called Harrison a damned idiot and punched him in the nose.’ Alan tossed a handful of cashews into his mouth.

  ‘He hit him?’ I said in disbelief. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘The man didn’t seem to be in need of medical attention. So I shook Walinski’s hand – gently, in case he had injured it on the idiot’s face – and found my way back here.’

  Lynn broke into song. ‘“Hooray and hallelujah, you had it comin’ to ya”,’ she carolled. ‘I mean he had it coming, but it doesn’t rhyme that way. Anyway –’ she raised her glass – ‘here’s to Ed Walinski and his strong right hand.’

  Alan grinned. ‘I might have done it myself if Walinski hadn’t got his licks in first. More sherry, anyone?’

  After Lynn and Tom left, I put my feet up for a few minutes with ice-packs on the knees, which were protesting a little about recent activity. But I was restless, and it still wasn�
��t anywhere near time to get ready for dinner. ‘Do you suppose,’ I said to Alan, who was absorbed in The Times crossword puzzle, ‘that it’s safe to wander around and explore a little? I really, really don’t want to run into either of the Horrible Harrisons.’

  ‘He’s probably retired with aspirin and a case of the sulks. That blow to the nose was painful, and when he fell he hit his head against an oak door jamb. As to his wife, I couldn’t say.’

  ‘I think I’ll chance it. Coming with me?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll finish this, if you can cope on your own. What on earth can they mean by “He touches with a pot, pleadingly”?’

  I thought a minute. ‘How many letters?’

  ‘Ten, beginning with a P., I think.’

  ‘Eureka! I finally got one. Panhandler.’

  ‘Hmm. It fits, but what’s a panhandler when it’s at home?’

  ‘A beggar. An American term. Pot equals pan. Touch equals handle, and also ask for money, and the whole thing means pleading. Ta-da!’

  I’m no good at the English ‘cryptic’ crosswords, so I was ridiculously pleased to have solved a clue Alan couldn’t. He grinned and saluted as I picked up my cane and left the room.

  I walked, carefully, down the beautiful Georgian staircase and turned right, since I had seen nothing of that side of the house, the oldest part, if my vague idea of the layout was correct. Leading out of the entrance hall was a lovely panelled door, with an elaborate cornice over it and a massive bronze door knob. I turned it, pushed the door back, and stepped into a different world.

  This had surely been part of the cloister of the old abbey. It was now an enclosed hallway, dimly lit. Arched windows on my left looked out on the gloomy November afternoon. Darkness had fallen early, as it is wont to do in the autumn in these northern latitudes. (The coming of short days still catches me by surprise in my adopted country. Because of England’s mild climate, Americans tend to forget that all of the UK lies farther north than any point of the Lower Forty-Eight.)