Page 120 of One More Christmas at the Castle
34
Hampered
The Mellings were later than expected and Nancy brought a message to the kitchen from Mrs Powys to say that she wanted tea served at the usual time, whether her guests had arrived or not. Everyone else was already gathered in the sitting room.
I only needed to make the pots of tea and coffee and it would all be ready. The trolley was laden with smoked salmon sandwiches and some of Henry’s little spiced fruit scones, halved and buttered.
Just as Henry, attired in pinstriped trousers and a black tailcoat, like an escapee from a P. G. Wodehouse novel, was poised to wheel it through, the bell for the front door finally jangled.
‘Here they are at last. You dash off and let them in, Henry, and I’ll bring tea.’
He was out of the room, coat-tails flying, before I’d even finished speaking and I followed him more slowly. Plum, who had somersaulted in earlier and had hung about in the hope of snippets of smoked salmon, was at my heels.
By the time I was wheeling the jingling trolley through the Gothic arch into the Great Hall, Henry had the door open andwas standing back to let the visitors in, though at the moment they still seemed too transfixed by astonishment to move.
‘Good afternoon, sir and madam,’ intoned Henry magnificently. ‘Please come in and I will attend to your luggage in a moment. The party are all assembled in the sitting room and tea is about to be served.’
They edged cautiously past him with sideways glances and I took my cue and pushed the trolley out on to the tiled floor – enter, stage right. Then I thought I’d better park it for a moment and assist.
‘Do let me take your coat, Mrs Melling,’ I said, and she turned and stared at me with almost as much astonishment as she’d regarded Henry.
I knew the Mellings to be in their sixties. Olive was a tall, bony, faded blonde, with greenish eyes set close together in a face like a well-made-up hatchet.
‘Thank you,’ she said, turning to allow me to slip off her coat. ‘And you are …?’
‘Dido Jones, and this is Henry Rudge. Mrs Powys has engaged us to do the catering over Christmas.’
Divested by Henry of both his coat and his car keys, Mr Melling was revealed as not so much a stuffed shirt, as a stuffed suit – it was grey and perfectly cut to cater for a figure that had run to seed a little around the middle. Grey seemed to be his keynote colour, for the suit matched his sleek, thick hair and sharp eyes.
Now he’d recovered from his first astonishment, he had assumed an urbane, but colourless, professional manner that was probably second nature to him.
‘I’m so glad Sabine has managed to get some help in, because I thought we’d be entirely at Maria’s mercy over Christmas,’ he drawled.
‘Maria’s husband has been ill, so they’ve gone to stay with their family for a couple of weeks,’ Henry said. ‘We hope to make your stay very comfortable.’
Since I knew Mr Melling was a semi-retired private cosmetic surgeon, that struck me as being probably much what he said to his wealthy patients.
The door to the sitting room opened and Lucy came out with a summons.
‘Hello, Olive – Frank,’ she said. ‘Cousin Sabine says you’re very late and are to come straight in.’
Her eyes fell on the parked tea trolley and she added, with relief, ‘Oh, good. Cousin Sabine’s been ringing the bell for tea for the last few minutes.’
‘Dominic should be here at any moment,’ said Mrs Melling. ‘We stayed with him last night and he was right behind us, so I can’t imagine where he’s got to!’
Henry winked at me as I followed them into the sitting room. Plum must have sneaked in when Lucy opened the door, for he was sitting before the fire, looking like one of those antique pottery dogs.
In the flurry of greetings, no one noticed me, except Xan, who had politely got up when the Mellings went in. He gave me a very warm smile – hot, even – so it was just as well Mrs Powys’s attention was otherwise engaged or the game would have been well and truly up.
Back in the hall, I found Henry had put the Mellings’ luggage just inside the door and was now carrying in a Fortnum and Mason hamper.
‘This must be their present to Mrs Powys. Coals to Newcastle really, darling, given the contents of the larder.’
He put it down by the table and turned to close the door, but before he could do so, we heard the loud tootling of a horn andthen, with a scrunch of gravel, a long, dark car drew up behind the other. It was either the missing Melling or the Mafia.
‘Master Dominic arrives,’ Henry said, returning to his post and tweaking the front of his immaculate tailcoat.
Curious, I lingered to see what the new arrival was like and saw a small, slight young man get out of the car and run lightly up the steps.
