Death of a Wedding Guest Read online

  ‘Can you blame me?’ Ellen asked. ‘The last thing I need is Caspar crouching at my heels, chewing up the lace train. If he’s going to be in church at all I want him handcuffed.’

  ‘So you’re having the full regalia, are you? Bridesmaids, organs, tiaras and all? Which church, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, Roakes, naturally. Where else? I mean, it’s the done thing, isn’t it, for these galas to take place on the bride’s home ground?’

  ‘I was only faintly startled because Toby never mentioned it. It’s the sort of prospect which in the ordinary way would have him arranging the pillow in the gas oven.’

  Evidently bored by this turn in the conversation, Jez heaved herself up from the table, gathered Caspar on to her left hip and proceeded to make a languorous exit, saying it was time to put him to bed. Since the time was four-fifteen, I awarded her low marks for failing to invent a slightly more subtle excuse while she was about it, but I should have known better. She was at once too indolent and too self-assured to bother with tactful gestures and had meant precisely what she said.

  ‘He was up half the night with his jigsaw,’ she explained before closing the door.

  Ellen, who had been frowning into her teacup during this break in the flow, now said:

  ‘To be absolutely frank with you, Tessa, Toby doesn’t know himself yet, so be a friend and don’t say a word to him. I must find the right moment to break it gently. We’re having a marquee in the garden too, so it’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘Why do it, then, since you know it’s bound to annoy him?’

  ‘Oh well, you see, the Roxburghs are great on the conventions. They like everything to be done according to tradition. Jeremy says it’s because they haven’t many of their own that they’re so keen to get stuck into other people’s.’

  ‘And you mean to indulge them, rather than Toby?’

  ‘Not really, but it won’t kill him to sacrifice one day in his life and since it means so much to them . . . they’ve been fantastically generous to us, you know; me and Jeremy, I mean. Did I tell you they’d bought this house for us in Little Venice and are having it all redecorated and everything? It’s going to be smashing if it’s ever finished. And they brought me the most fabulous gold bracelet from Geneva the other day. Positively strewing bribes in our path.’

  ‘No wonder you feel kindly towards them! Not every young man’s parents are so eager to gain a daughter.’

  ‘I shan’t let it go to my head, though, because it’s not me as an individual that they’re wooing. It’s simply that they’re so, so grateful to me for being young, single and passably respectable, compared to some.’

  ‘Compared to some what?’

  ‘Well, you see, Jeremy was shacked up for about two years with a female called Imogen. She’s Scandinavian or something. Not that they’d have minded that, I suppose, but she’s at least thirty-five, and divorced and she’s got two children who go to boarding schools, and his poor old Mum and Dad were shaking all over at the thought that he might walk in one afternoon and say he’d married her.’

  ‘Did he want to?’

  ‘To begin with I think he did, yes, but she wasn’t properly divorced then and by the time the legal thing was settled he’d begun to cool off. She’d become so frightfully jealous and possessive, kept making the most ghastly scenes if he was five minutes late getting home from work; and having the children there for the holidays was rather a drag too. Anyway, about three months ago they had the most blinding row and he walked out. She’s been hounding him ever since and ringing up day and night in floods of tears, but it only turns him off more than ever. He says he can see now how deeply neurotic she is and he’s thankful to have escaped. Anyway, it was soon after they split up that I met him.’

  ‘And how was that?’

  ‘Was what?’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘Oh, through Desmond, oddly enough. They’d been at Harrow together, before Desmond got chucked out for being drunk and disorderly in chapel. It was when Desmond was playing at the Comedy that I first met Jeremy. He was at a loose end because being with Imogen had meant cutting himself off from all his old mates, so he dropped in to see the play one evening and came round afterwards. I happened to be in Desmond’s dressing room, so we all went out and had supper together and that’s how it started.’

  ‘So it was Jeremy’s rebound, not yours? You were still seeing Desmond in those days? I am sorry to ask all these questions, but I feel that someone ought to and I can’t think who else it could be.’

  ‘Poor old Tess!’ Ellen said, regarding me with fond compassion. ‘But I honestly don’t mind at all. I’m grateful to you for taking an interest, and the answer is yes. The weird thing is that I didn’t particularly take to Jeremy at first, but he was very kind and sweet and I felt sorry for him. He took me out to dinner once or twice and told me some more about the sad story of him and Imogen and so on, and then we’d both go and see Desmond after the show. He just sort of edged his way in, if you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes I do, only too well.’

  ‘Well, things went on like that for a few weeks, until the play had to close because they were doing such rotten business and that set Desmond off on the most frightful bout of depression, so that he was blind drunk for days; but instead of getting all worked up and terrified of his being arrested or run over, I said to myself: What the hell? Che sarà sarà was what I said.’

  ‘And floated out to dinner with Jeremy?’

  ‘More or less. It had become the natural thing to do. As I’ve told you, he’s fantastically kind and I had a sad story of my own to tell by then. It made a kind of bond.’

  ‘Two little rebounders, weeping into the coq au vin?’

  ‘Okay, laugh as much as you like, Tess, but that wasn’t all we had in common. And I’ll tell you something else to cheer you up. I brought him round here to meet Jez one evening and she was wildly impressed. She said he was packed to the lid with all the right auras and vibrations and could obviously never put a foot wrong. So then she worked out his horoscope. It was a really deep one, starting with the exact minute of his birth and the actual street in London and so on, in order to get everything right in relation to the sun. It was lucky his mother is so doting because she’d recorded every cloying detail in a great fat album called “Baby Days” or something revolting. Anyway, it took Jez three solid days to work on it and by about half way through she was practically dancing with excitement. It came out that our magnetic fields were simply perfect for each other. In fact, if any two people in the world ought to belong together it’s Jeremy and me, so what do you say to that?’

  ‘Well, naturally, I wouldn’t attempt to argue with that kind of evidence,’ I replied with a sigh. ‘But it seems to me that I’ve now heard about fourteen more or less barmy reasons for your marrying Jeremy, so couldn’t you give me one really convincing one?’

  ‘Yes, of course I can, because we’re both madly in love. How dotty of me not to mention that before, but honestly, Tess, I just took it for granted that you’d know.’

  Ellen had opened her enormous grey-green eyes as wide as they would go while saying this, and I have to confess that I had no idea whether to believe her or not.

  CHAPTER THREE

  More than a week went by before I had a chance to form my own opinion of Jeremy Roxburgh and on balance it was unfavourable, although his shortcomings were the reverse of everything I had expected.

  I had invited him and Ellen to dine with us at Beacon Square and at the very last minute Scotland Yard, for whom dreaming up ways to annoy me comes high on the list of priorities, sent Robin off to investigate some squalid little murder in the mud flats of Essex. This called for a drastic change of strategy, for I had been relying on him for an unbiased opinion of his prospective cousin-in-law, and also to keep the temperature down if my own should prove adverse, and a whole evening at home with just the three of us was too daunting to contemplate.

  Fortunately
I was able to wangle the house seats for a play which had just opened to rave notices, and I booked a table for supper afterwards at a dining club, having first ascertained from the secretary that Jeremy was not a member, so as to avoid any nonsense about who was paying the bill.

  Aware of Ellen’s predilection for lame ducks, if not hopeless cases, I had resigned myself to meeting someone either shaggy and tongue-tied or bombastically intellectual and even, if pushed, to finding some good in these qualities. Jeremy, however, did not possess them.

  We met in the foyer, where he and Ellen had arrived ahead of time, punctuality being one of his unexpected virtues, and I took an instant dislike to him for the very unfair reason that, even before being introduced, he managed to upset all my preconceived theories, so forcing me to abandon the prepared role and adopt a completely opposite approach. Unlike the raffish types I had grown accustomed to through similar encounters, Jeremy was tall and clean shaven and wore an impeccable dark suit and an Old Harrovian tie. He looked as sleek as any successful businessman and, while I have nothing against such people, I associate them more easily with middle age than the early twenties.

  The initial hostility was modified after we had gone to our seats, still with ten minutes to wait for curtain up, for I discovered that he had excellent manners, had troubled to acquaint himself with various details about my career and Robin’s and could talk with at least superficial intelligence and humour on a number of subjects. Why these qualities should have appealed to Ellen remained as great a mystery as ever, but my own dithering about from one attitude to another was to be the keynote for the evening. At one moment I was admiring his self-assurance and acuteness and in the next the self-assurance struck me as verging on complacency and the conceited tilt of his head was grating on my nerves like the scrape of a knife on china.

  During the second interval, having failed to entice us into another struggle to the bar, he went out on his own and Ellen moved up a place and said:

  ‘He’s being tactful. Giving you a chance to tell me what you think of him.’

  ‘It’s a bit early to judge. He’s certainly very bright, and very good-looking.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘They were meant to be compliments.’

  ‘You didn’t make them sound like it.’

  ‘Well, how can one form any sort of opinion in so short a time? Specially with someone like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, smooth. You have to admit that?’

  ‘No, I don’t. It’s only that he’s going flat out to impress you.’

  ‘Honestly, Ellen, you’ll be telling me next that he’s a shy, timid fawn, putting on a big act.’

  ‘Yes, I will. Not that I blame you, Tess, because I got just the same first impression myself, but he’s not half so confident as he makes out. Anyway, do please make an effort to like him.’

  It was an appeal to break down the toughest opposition, but at the time I could only nod and smile, because the exit doors were closing and Jeremy was coming back to his seat, threading his way carefully through the line of knees and ankles and meticulously apologising to each individual as he passed. It was entirely consistent with the picture I had thus far formed of him, for one could neither fault the performance nor repress the thought that none of it would have been necessary if he had bothered to return to his seat a minute earlier.

  The same pattern was repeated during dinner and was highlighted when it came to ordering the wine. I had asked him to take charge of this and he did so in an impressively knowledgeable, yet unassuming way, then promptly ruined the effect by recounting a dreadfully patronising anecdote about some pretentious ignoramus making a fool of himself with a sommelier.

  The final paradoxical note was struck almost at the end, just after I had referred to his and Ellen’s horoscopes and had congratulated them on Jezebel’s findings. To my surprise, Jeremy did not accept these remarks with his customary complacency but turned very red and stared down at his plate, mumbling something pompous and irritable about hoping to have a more substantial basis for their relationship than that.

  Fortunately for my good resolutions, it was possible to attribute this lapse in part to the fact that two women had just entered the restaurant and were making heavy weather of shoving their way past our table. Ellen and I were sharing the banquette seat, facing the room, but Jeremy had his back to it and so was taking the brunt of their onslaught and I noticed that one of them actually placed her hand on the back of his chair, tilting it as she went by, so that he was jerked forward and the spoon slithered out of his hand and fell on the tablecloth.

  Startled by this gratuitous rudeness, I craned my head to get a closer look at the woman, but she had moved on at a swift clip and all I could tell was that she was exceptionally tall, not less than six feet, with an arrogant and self-conscious bearing and that she had a mass of pale blonde hair piled into a bun at the back of her neck which, against all the known odds, did not make her look in the least dowdy. The next minute she and her companion had disappeared into another banquette seat further up the room and out of sight.

  It had been a trivial enough incident, but Jeremy never wholly recovered from it. He became steadily more morose and nervous, constantly shifting his chair and plainly paying small attention to anything Ellen and I were saying. We were eventually obliged to fall back on chatting to each other, my estimation of him gradually dropping from five out of ten to zero.

  Luckily the point had been reached where I was soon able to ask for the bill, so this tiresome climax to the evening was not prolonged above ten minutes. Moreover, he rallied a little at the end, when we emerged on to the street, thanking me profusely and offering to drive me home. However, both he and Ellen lived in the opposite direction to mine, and nearer to where his car was parked, so it was not difficult to decline. Cutting the argument short, I hurled myself at a cruising taxi and was driven back to Beacon Square, out of temper, out of patience and weighed down by a depressing sense of failure.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Needless to say, Ellen succeeded in charming everyone into the belief that her way was theirs, even soothing away Toby’s terror and dismay at the prospect of a marquee with a hundred people inside it, not to mention the deep opposition of Mr Parkes, the gardener, who had visions of his cherished lawn being churned up into a battlefield. The date was fixed for May 26th and Toby promptly handed me an invitation to stay with him for the three days preceding it which I, being between jobs and with two weeks out before the start of rehearsals, had neither wish nor reason to decline. Ostensibly I was there to protect him from telephone callers, caterers, reporters and other sadists whom he visualised queueing up to torment him. It is probable though that my presence was made even more desirable by the fact that, in occupying at least one of the available bedrooms, I should reduce the risk of his having the house swarming with strangers, but I had no doubt that I should be called upon to perform the subsidiary duties as well.

  He need not have worried, however, for Ellen, having won the major battle, was careful not to exasperate him further and announced that she would be coming down on her own on the eve of the wedding and that the entire Roxburgh contingent, including two child bridesmaids with their parents and nannies, had engaged rooms at the Swan at Stadhampton. She had also arranged for Jeremy and his brother Simon, who was to be the best man, to spend the night with friends in the village named Roper, and the only concession she asked was that Jeremy’s parents, who were driving her down from London, should be received with light refreshments and a civil welcome.

  I was faintly taken aback by her choice of Alison Roper’s house for it was well known that her son, Phil, was in the top league of Ellen’s admirers and had taken the news of her engagement to Jeremy very hard. Since Alison had a somewhat overdeveloped, not to say over-vociferous, maternal instinct, I had expected relations in that quarter to be somewhat cool.

  Alison and her children, who included an elder
son and daughter, both now married and far away, had come to live at Roakes when her husband bolted with a beautiful Indonesian and she could no longer afford to keep up their house in Hampstead Garden Suburb. She and Toby had never progressed beyond the point of armed neutrality, largely because he was antisocial to an almost paranoiac degree and suffered from the delusion that all widows and divorcées had been put on this earth purposely to torment, bully and, in extreme cases, ensnare him into marriage.

  Philip and Ellen, on the other hand, two lonely, one-parent children and more or less of an age, had quickly become allies and, to my certain knowledge, had been engaged to marry each other several times in their early teens. Alison had worked hard at encouraging the friendship and, with typical naivety, had pinned great hopes on its developing into a more enduring relationship. The first blow to these had come when Ellen removed herself to London and took up with the actor, Desmond Davidson, a digression which Alison chose to dismiss, and rightly as it turned out, as no more than a passing phase.

  Ellen having now decided to avail herself of Alison’s hospitality, I concluded that she assumed Phil’s feelings to have been as ephemeral as her own and had taken his dogged and doglike devotion for a mere token of brotherly affection, or else that, aware of the laceration to his feelings in having to share the same roof with her future husband, the need to placate Toby overcame all other scruples.

  ‘Or maybe Phil is getting over his hopeless passion and has found himself a new girl?’ I suggested. ‘I haven’t seen him for months so that could have happened and, if so, all is forgiven.’

  This was on Wednesday afternoon, the first of my stay at Roakes Common and Toby and I were idling it away in his revolving summerhouse which, on a principle akin to that of a child closing its eyes in order to become invisible, had been revolved to the position where it backed on to the house and garden, so that nothing could be seen but woods and fields.