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Hilton P. Krankenhaus had got today. But they guessed they were about to find out.
'Y'heard of Krankenhaus's Catflaps?' Hilton drawled as Tally began to lead him up the Ancestors' staircase. 'Biggest catflap providers in the Yewnited Stites.'
Tally was saved from replying by a commotion at the foot of the stairs.
'Hey! There no elevator here?' shouted Mrs Krankenhaus, wobbling perilously on her high heels as she clung to the newel post.
'Sorry, no,' said Tally.
If Mrs Krankenhaus could have frowned, she would have done so, but the relevant muscles had long since been removed. She hauled herself up the steps one by one, clinging to the banister as she went, with Jane hovering behind in case of disaster. 'These goddam stairs,' cursed Mrs Krankenhaus furiously, an expression of amused surprise fixed permanently on her face. As they passed the Ancestors, Jane felt their painted pupils contract in horror.
'I'm afraid I haven't heard of your catflaps, actually,' said Tally. 'I'm not much of a cat fan, you see,' she added apologetically.
'Doesn't like cats!' Hilton boomed over his shoulder to his wife who, having hauled herself to the top of the stairs, stood there open-mouthed. Not with surprise, however. She was busy checking her lipstick in a clouded, mould-spotted eighteenth-century mirror.
'Can't see a goddam thing in this,' she was muttering to herself, utterly ignoring her husband.
'Well, that's a darn shame,' Hilton declared to Tally and Jane. 'Cawse the old place would sure liven up with a few moggies around.' Terrifying visions of Ann from
Blissjul
and her poorly pussy sprang to Jane's mind.
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'This is the Long Gallery,' Tally said, leading the way.
'Uh-huh,' said Krankenhaus noncommittally, casting a cursory glance over the great carved oak double doors that formed the entrance to the passage. Suddenly he stopped and peered at them more closely. Then he slapped his knee. 'Ma!' he exclaimed, sticking his snout-like nose against the wood and beckoning over his wife. 'You'll never guess what these goddam carvings actually say. HK! HK for Hilton Krankenhaus.'
Tally cleared her throat as politely as she could considering the outraged hammering of her heart. 'Actually, it's HK for Henry and Katherine,' she said, rather shrilly. 'Henry the Eighth and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. The doors were carved for their state visit. In fapt, the whole Long Gallery was built for it.'
'King Henry the Eighth of Britain came here?' exclaimed Mrs Krankenhaus, her expressionless marble eyes and immobile forehead belying the amazement in her voice.
'Well, no, as it happens,' Tally confessed. 'He was supposed to, but then the Third Earl, who lived here at the time, caught pneumonia and so the entire royal party went somewhere else. Rather bad luck, actually. But then the Third Earl was known as the Unlucky Earl.'
Til say,' said Hilton. 'What a bummer.' He returned to his scrutiny of the carvings. 'These here doors have given me an idea though,' he said to Mrs Krankenhaus. 'Imagine a scaled down, catflap-sized, miniature version of these. In oak. With my initials on them just like this. Classy, huh? They'll go down a storm in the Hamptons. The VIPs'll snap 'em up.'
'Hilton,' said his wife in an irritated voice. 'You know as well as I do that there are no VIPs in the Hamptons.'
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'What ya say?' Hilton looked puzzled. It didn't make much sense to Jane either, and Tally had no idea what the Hamptons was.
'There are just Ps, remember?' finished Mrs Krankenhaus magisterially.
Hilton nodded. 'Sure, honey,' he said distractedly, his mind crammed with catflap possibilities. 'Or,' he added excitedly, walking forward into the Long Gallery, 'we could do a catflap that's like a picture, all scaled down in miniature, with a litde gold frame round it and all. That miserable son of a bitch over there would do.' He pointed at the age-blackened portrait of a consumptive-looking man in a Regency striped waistcoat.
'That's Lord Vespasian Venery,' said Tally, stung on her ancestor's behalf.
'Yeah, so what's eating him?' asked Krankenhaus, temporarily diverted from the subject of feline exits and entrances.
'Well, he was always rather sickly, and died in a duel in the end,' said Tally, gazing sympathetically into her antecedent's sad eyes with their drooping lids.
'Doesn't look like a flghtin' kinda guy to me,' said Krankenhaus dismissively.
'No, he wasn't,' said Tally. 'It wasn't his duel. He stumbled across someone else's by accident. He had very bad eyesight, you see.'
But Krankenhaus wasn't listening. His attention was now fixed on the linenfold oak panelling which ran the length of the Long Gallery. Tally hoped desperately he had noticed the woodworm. Surely he wouldn't buy the place if he had.
'Come to think of it, this old panelling along here would make a great showroom,' Hilton said, gazing
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speculatively along the length of the dusty, dark wood corridor with his bulging, boiled-egg eyes. 'You could just cut into the sides here and fix the flaps on. It's a sin to waste a great long room like this. Just imagine,' he added, as the idea took hold, 'fifty Krankenhaus Catflaps lined up all the way down this room, from one end to the other, and cats wandering in and out of 'em all, demonstrating 'em, all day long!'
Tally almost doubled over in horror. She looked at Jane in anguish.
'Ah disagree,' declared Mrs Krankenhaus. Tally and Jane looked at her gratefully. 'Ah think we should rip the lot out,' she pronounced, devastatingly, sweeping a bird-like, ring-encrusted hand through the dusty air. 'These filthy old cushions, for a start,' she said, stabbing with a gleaming red talon at a seat which had once supported Charles I.
Jane caught Tally's agonised glance. Desperate measures were needed. She took a deep breath. 'Quick, look,' she gasped, pointing into the gloomy far corner of the hall. 'Did you see it?'
'What? What?' said both the Krankenhauses.
'A mouse?' squealed Mrs Krankenhaus.
'The Queen,' said Jane in a low whisper.
'The Queen of
England?
said Mrs Krankenhaus, as if she expected to see the familiar grey-haired, bespectacled figure of Elizabeth II trot briskly out of the shadows with her corgis at her heels.
'Queen Katherine of Aragon,' hissed Jane. 'She never got here in life, but. . .' Her voice fell away dramatically. She could not, in fact, think of anything else to say.
'She haunts Mullions,' Tally hastily joined in, knowing full well that the most the house held byway of apparitions was an occasional wailing from the cellar around Christmas
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which could have been anything from wind to the seasonal village help whom Mrs Ormondroyd didn't get on with.
The Krankenhauses looked doubtful. 'You mean Her Majesty — her ghost — walks here? In this corridor?' stammered Mrs Krankenhaus.
'Yes,' said Tally cheerily, now safely on the home straight.
'With her head tucked underneath her arm, naturally,' chimed in Jane helpfully, remembering too late that, of Henry VlII's wives, Katherine of Aragon was one of the divorced rather than beheaded or died persuasion. The Krankenhauses did not notice but Tally gave her an icy look.
'Well, isn't that kinda cool, though?' asked Hilton, clamping one huge, reassuring pink hand over his wife's tiny wrist. 'Ah mean, what's an old British home without a ghost? You gotta have one, it seems to me.'
Tally looked horrified. Was defeat to be snatched from the jaws of victory?
Jane's brain raced. 'Er, yes,' she ad-libbed heroically. 'But I think you need to think carefully about the
implications!
The Krankenhauses looked at her, puzzled.
'The cats,' Jane explained, as inspiration suddenly, brilliantly, struck. 'Animals react very oddly to supernatural phenomena, as I expect you know. Cats are especially terrified
Five minutes later, the Krankenhauses had gone amid much scrunching of gravel and grinding of gears. Relieved, Tally watched them depart, her long, lean frame slumped against the floor-length hall windows and her lanky shadow thrown back across the black and white tiles by the fading sun. Jane, also gazing out over the park, admired
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the way the light was so soft and low you could almost see every blade of grass.
'I love this time of the day,' Tally said. 'It's almost the only time when the light doesn't show what a wreck the poor old place is. And it's so quiet. Nothing and no one else around.'
There was silence for a few minutes. The sun sank further behind the conifers at the edge of the park, which stood as upright as a row of feathers. Red Indian feathers, thought Jane, wondering vaguely what Big Horn and Julia were doing. She gazed out into the gathering darkness so hard that her vision began to swim.
'Tally,' she said suddenly. 'You know what you were just saying about nothing or no one else around?'
'Mmm?'
'Well, it's just that... I can see someone coming.'
Tally's drooping eyes snapped open. It was true. A figure, just visible in the misty, milky distance at the bottom of the park, was coming slowly towards them up the drive. Fear gripped Jane's heart. Had Katherine of Aragon finally decided to drop in for a fino before dinner? Most terrifying of all, had Hilton P. Krankenhaus III changed his mind?
The apparition did not pause. It kept moving directly towards them. Neither Tally nor Jane dared stir. Their attention was fixed on the approaching figure, as if merely by staring at it they could somehow deflect it. But it was not to be deflected. Across the bridge and over the ha-ha it came. Round the bend and past the rose garden. Up the steps to the terrace. Hearts thundering, Tally and Jane dashed outside to meet it.
As they approached, they saw that the visitor was neither a coachman nor a headless queen. It was a man
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in modern dress. Very possibly Gucci.
'Good evening,' he said in a light, well-bred voice that nonetheless held a hint of steel in it. He held out a well-manicured hand to Tally. 'Saul Dewsbury. We met last night.'
Tally flushed. 'Yes, of course.'
'Lovely to see you again,' said Saul, nodding to Jane. His stark impeccability contrasted profoundly with the rioting decadence around him. Absolutely every hair was in place. Even his eyebrows looked groomed. 'It completely slipped my mind last night that I would be in this area on business today,' he said. 'It seemed rude not to drop in. From what you said I thought Mullions would be very beautiful, but it's even lovelier than I expected.' He looked fixedly at Tally as he spoke. To Jane's mixed horror and disgust, Tally actually blushed.
'How is Champagne?' Jane asked pointedly.
'Champagne is very well, thank you,' Saul replied. Jane looked fiercely at Tally to make sure she was taking this in. 'At least, she was the last time I saw her. You see our relationship, unfortunately, is over. As of this morning, in fact.'
Jane stared. Over? So suddenly? She gazed at Saul, who looked back at her boldly, one eyebrow inquiringly raised as if daring her to ask why. Champagne had seemed
terribly
keen on him. Was it possible he had finished with
hert
Could it be that for the first time in her life, Champagne was the dumpee, rather than the dumper?
'Look, I realise it's getting late,' Saul said, giving Tally another of his melting looks, 'but I wonder whether it might be at all possible to see round Mullions. I'd love to see inside what is obviously an exceptional sixteenth-century manor house.'
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And could it possibly be, thought Jane, her head buzzing with more wild surmise than Cortes's men in Darien, that Saul had dumped Champagne because of Tally? Throwing over the famous and beautiful Champagne D'Vyne for the plain, flat-chested, decidedly eccentric-looking Tally seemed rather unlikely, admittedly, but what else was he doing here? She didn't believe for a minute his claim to be here on business. Whatever was going on? She had no idea but she knew she didn't like it.
'Oh, yes, of course, I'd love to show you round,' said Tally, beaming at Saul. I'd be delighted to. And you must stay and have some supper. Jane's just about to go back to London for work tomorrow, you see, so I'd be glad of the company.'
'No, no, I'm in no hurry,' said Jane, stretching her eyes warningly at Tally. 'I can stay for a while.' Until Saul Dewsbury is safely out of the place, she added to herself.
'You'll need to set off now to miss the Sunday night traffic,' urged Saul. Jane flashed him a furious look. 'Don't worry,' he added, giving her his most charming smile. Til look after Natalia.'
Jane seethed. 'Well, if you're sure?' She made a final, direct appeal to Tally, who nodded and smiled reassuringly.
Til be fine,' she said eagerly.
She can't wait to get rid of me too, thought Jane miserably. Barely twenty-four hours after meeting Saul, she's completely under his spell.
Jane felt uneasy all the way back to London and not merely because the 2CV's petrol gauge had rocketed into the red zone. The image of Saul standing proprietorially with Tally on the terrace alternated with last night's ghastly scenes at Mark Stackable's flat. Damn Amanda. If she hadn't insisted on annexing Mark all the way through