Read Online Christmas at Candleshoe by Michael Innes - Free Book Online Page A

artless lady, feels that this exploratory skirmish has gone far enough. As soon as Grant returns it will be time to bring the visit to a close. She gives her hostess a preliminary indication of this by picking up and smoothing her gloves. Miss Candleshoe, who is perhaps not an artless lady either, drops the stopper into the decanter and inquires if Mrs Feather is comfortably accommodated in an hotel. The Benison Arms at Benison Magna is said to be disagreeable, largely because flooded with sightseers, who are said to pay money to go gaping round Benison Court. Mrs Feather will recall that the servants of poor Dean Swift in his last years used to show their bizarrely demented master in return for half a-crown. Miss Candleshoe confesses to a belief that showing one’s ancestral home for a like consideration is an action of very comparable sort. But the Spendloves have not perhaps been at Benison long enough to develop any very nice feelings in such matters.
    At this moment Grant and Mr Armigel return to the room. Mrs Feather, remembering the half-crown which she herself had been clutching in Miss Candleshoe’s private chapel, has felt herself on the verge of blushing. She is therefore glad of the diversion. Grant and Miss Candleshoe exchange civilities about the injured part of Grant’s person, which Miss Candleshoe roundly describes as a buttock. Mrs Feather gloves her left hand and rises. Miss Candleshoe makes Mr Armigel a sign which can only be interpreted as an instruction to ring the bell. Mr Armigel accordingly advances to the fireplace and gives a tug at a long silken rope, about the thickness of a ship’s cable, that depends from the gloom of the ceiling. Perhaps because it is quite evident that nothing happens or can happen as a consequence of this ritual, Mr Armigel gives a second tug with rather too much vigour. The rope falls to the floor, together with a long coil of wire and about a barrow-load of plaster. The wolfhound, which appears to be peckish again, falls upon the rope and savages it. It is apparent that the designed ritual has wholly broken down. There is no means of summoning a servant; in all probability there is no servant to summon; the visit of the Feathers to Candleshoe Manor looks like being, of necessity, indefinitely prolonged.
    Grant Feather is rather disposed to turn and run. His mother advances upon Miss Candleshoe in good order, determined upon farewells. Whereupon Miss Candleshoe, with much formality and to the evident consternation of her chaplain, presents her visitors with an invitation to dine.
    Mrs Feather has managed to get her back to the most recent evidence of the house’s extreme dilapidation; although the air is thick with dust and powdered plaster she contrives not to cough. She sees – being a woman of precise and rapid social discernment – that in the circumstances Miss Candleshoe’s utterance is in fact less an invitation than a command. Hesitation must suggest a hint that the present resources of Miss Candleshoe’s establishment may be severely taxed by an unexpected accession to her board. Mrs Feather has a very good idea how limited these resources are. Is she not, indeed, planning in the light of that knowledge? And here Miss Candleshoe is conceivably not without a fairly full insight into her visitor’s mind. All this renders necessary the preservation of a very high decorum. Mrs Feather accepts – charmingly but without effusiveness. Grant must do something about their car – it can scarcely be left on the roadside while darkness falls – but that need take no more than fifteen minutes. Mrs Feather hopes that this interval will not conflict with Miss Candleshoe’s customary domestic arrangements.
    Miss Candleshoe is very clear about this. Nevertheless she will herself have a word with her housekeeper. Tapping with her ebony stick, and bent forward as if scanning the threadbare tartan carpet for an invisible pin, she moves towards the door. Reaching it, she