‘Oh, I just ferreted around a bit,’ said Mariana, delightedly. ‘There’s oceans of stuff in the attics, all packed away in trunks, in fact no one’s thrown anything away for the last hundred years; we’re all absolute magpies, you could write a whole family saga from the stuff if you wanted to. Eat your heart out, Mr Galsworthy.’
The game of Secret Murder required everyone to imagine the house to be in the middle of nowhere. There had been a power cut, and it had just been discovered that there was a mad killer among the house-guests…
‘It’s not Agatha Christie at all, it’s a remake of The Cat and the Canary,’ said somebody disagreeably and was told to hush.
‘And,’ said Mariana, with mock-severity, ‘you’ll all be given a folded-up card, which will assign you a role at the house-party. There’s a shady lady and a sinister foreigner and a colonel and so on – oh, and a butler, of course. And whoever gets the card marked with a cross is the murderer.’
Bruce, chiming in good-humouredly, explained that everyone’s identity must be kept secret, but the object of the game was for the guests to keep out of the murderer’s reach until the lights came on again. They could all go anywhere in the house, well, anywhere except Lucy’s bedroom, which was on the little second floor, and the killer had to find as many people as possible in the dark and murder them.
‘How?’ demanded the person who had said this was The Cat and the Canary.
‘Well, by tapping the victim on the shoulder and saying “You’re dead”.’
‘How extremely polite and refined. If I get the murderer’s card I’ll do a bit more than tap shoulders, I promise you.’
This was greeted by several, slightly nervous, female giggles.
Bruce was on light-switching duty, said Mariana, and the lights would go off exactly ten minutes after the printed cards had been drawn, and remain off for half an hour. Then they would all gather in the big sitting-room for the interrogation.
Edmund had joined in, agreeing that it was marvellously spooky. A terrific game. He had been enjoying the party; there were one or two younger girls to whom he had been introduced, and everyone was friendly. Just before the lights went out, he heard one of the older female guests asking Mariana who was that nice-looking boy, and he paused, pleased to hear himself described as nice-looking and wanting to hear the reply.
‘Oh, that’s Edmund Fane,’ said Mariana. ‘He’s a relation of Deb’s husband. He’s reading law – it’s only his first year, but they say he’s so clever. Yes, he is nice-looking, isn’t he? But he has such a bleak time of it, poor Edmund, with the most frightful father, you wouldn’t believe how awful – well, yes, it is a medical condition, melancholia or something, and we’re all so sorry about it. That’s why I said to Bruce, let’s for goodness’ sake give the poor boy some fun for once, prime some of the girls to flirt with him a bit…I said to Bruce, it’s only kind…’
The bitch. The all-time, gilt-edged, venom-tongued bitch. Edmund stood very still, the noise and the laughter of the party going on all round him, but coldly and angrily detached from it all. As if a glass panel had come down between him and the guests.
They were sorry for him. Mariana and Bruce Trent were sorry for him because of his father – that was why he had been invited. ‘He has such a bleak time of it, poor Edmund…’
He heard, as if from a long distance, an amiable response from Bruce, saying something about it being open house here, everyone welcome, but how about getting on with the game. Nearly time for the murders, ha-ha, hope everyone’s enjoying themselves, let’s have some more drinks before the lights go out, shall we…?