There was more than a trace of Winston Churchill in his voice.
The vicar organized a few games for the children: puss in the corner, blindman’s buff, hide-and-go-seek, with prizes donated by Dr. Darby—mints, of course—to the winners.
The grown-ups gossiped and laughed quietly on the sidelines.
After a while, the more boisterous activities dwindled to guessing games.
As the evening wore on, the false jollity subsided. Yawns appeared, stifled at first but eventually becoming open and damn the niceties.
Children began to doze off, and their parents soon followed. It wasn’t long before most of the displaced villagers of Bishop’s Lacey were in the grips of sleep.
Later, as I lay snuggled beneath my eiderdown, alone in the vast, barnlike coldness of the east wing, I could hear, for a while, the muted buzz of conversation, like the hum of a distant hive.
After a time, this, too, died down, and my ears detected only an occasional cough.
It had been a long, long day, but in spite of it, I couldn’t sleep. In my mind, I saw the bundled bodies scattered helter-skelter in the foyer: sleeping mounds beneath their blankets like so many tussocks in a country churchyard.
I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, but it was no use. Surely everyone was asleep by now, and nobody would be disturbed if I crept to the top of the stairs and took a peek. With the very real threat of Father losing his battle with the taxman, I was now consciously saving up images for a time when I was an old lady—a time when I would rummage through my recollections of Buckshaw as one might turn the pages of a dusty photograph album.
“Ah, yes,” I would quaver in my old woman’s voice, “I mind the time we were snowed in on Christmas Eve. The winter night that Bishop’s Lacey came to Buckshaw.”
I climbed out of bed and into my refrigerated clothing.
Down the corridor I crept, stopping now and then to listen.
Nothing.
I stood at the top of the stairs, looking down upon the makeshift shelter.
Perhaps because it was so close to Christmas, there was something oddly touching about those huddled forms, as if I were an aviator, or an angel, or God, even, looking down from above upon all of these helpless, sleeping humans.
From somewhere far away, in the west wing, came the sound of distant music, and of unreal recorded voices.
So profound was the silence in the house that I was even able to make out the words:
“I shall never forget Hawkhover Castle.”
Phyllis Wyvern was watching herself on film again.
The music swelled, and then died.
Downstairs, someone rolled over and began to snore. From where I stood, I could see Dieter, bundled against the railing on the landing. Smart enough to choose a higher sleeping place, I thought, where the air is slightly warmer, and the flooring not so cold as the tiles of the foyer.
In the hall below, Mrs. Mullet breathed heavily, her arm draped as casually over Alf as the babes in the wood.
Slowly, I descended the staircase, taking special care to tiptoe past the sleeping Dieter.
Over there, against the wall, was Cynthia Richardson, in sleep as relaxed as an archangel on a Christmas card; her face like Flora in the Botticelli painting. I wished I’d had a camera so that I could preserve that unexpected glimpse of her forever.
At her side the vicar slept, his brow deeply furrowed.
“Hannah, please! No!” he whispered, and for a moment, I thought that he had awakened.
Who was Hannah, I wondered, and why was she tormenting him in his sleep?
Upstairs, a door closed softly.
Phyllis Wyvern, I thought. She’s finished for the night with her viewing.
A marvelous idea floated into my mind.
Why not see if she wanted to talk? Perhaps, like me, she was sleepless.
Or what if she was lonely? We could have a nice chat about grisly murders. Being so famous probably meant that all her friends were in it for the money—or the glory: for being able to say they were chummy with Phyllis Wyvern.
She’d have no one to talk to about the things that really counted.
Besides, it would probably be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a world-famous movie star all to myself—even if only for a few minutes.
But wait! What if she was tired? What if she still hadn’t got over that fierce outburst when she’d slapped Gil Crawford’s face? Would she do the same to me? I could almost feel the sting of her hand on my cheek.
Still, if I told Feely I’d spent an hour or so idly chitchatting with Phyllis Wyvern, she’d be sick jealous!
That settled it.
From the bottom of the stairs, I set out on tiptoe across the foyer, picking a precarious and winding path between the sleeping bodies.
While I was still in the midst of the encampment and halfway to the west staircase, a water closet flushed.
I froze.
It was an unpleasant fact of life at Buckshaw that the rickety maze of pipes that passed for plumbing had seen far, far better days. They were, in fact, past their prime when Queen Victoria was on the throne, if one may be permitted to say such a thing.
A flush here or a water faucet activated there transmitted vast shudders and groans to the farthest corners of the house like some bizarre hydraulic signaling system from another age.
To put it plainly, no one at Buckshaw had any secrets—not, at least, in the plumbing department.
I stopped breathing until the shudder of pipes subsided in a far distant clatter. Ned, who was propped up against a wall with his feet splayed out like a cast-off doll, gave a groan, and Mary, whose head was on his knees, turned over in her sleep.