Free A Death in the Wedding Party by Caroline Dunford Page B

problems of getting old, you don’t get to do things so much. Too creaky in the joints. You end up watching people, don’t you know.’
    ‘It certainly is a mixed party,’ I said looking around the room and silently absorbing the name Fitzroy was using. Could that be his real name?
    ‘You can say that again. Ratty didn’t want to hold the wedding here, but it seems that Baggy just wouldn’t let go. Like a terrier with a rat, he said, just kept banging on and on about until Ratty felt it would be easier to let him have it and get the whole thing over with.’
    ‘Ratty?’
    ‘The Earl.’
    ‘Of course, you English do love your nicknames,’ I said.
    ‘We do indeed,’ said my grandfather. ‘Not that the younger generation seem to come up with anything very imaginative, Tip-Top, Baggy, the Nag.’ He coughed again and ran his fingers through his moustache. ‘Err-umm.’
    ‘The Nag?’ I caught sight of Richenda smiling broadly and showing large teeth in her very long face. ‘Richenda Stapleford?’
    ‘She does tend to go on a bit about women’s rights and all that palaver,’ said my grandfather apologetically.
    ‘Nothing to do with her appearance?’ I asked.
    My grandfather fairly snorted into his drink. ‘I can tell we are going to get on, you and I,’ he said and gave me a sly wink.
    I smiled, but mentally I was reeling. This was the man who had been painted as an ogre to me all my life? This gossipy, friendly old man?
    The dinner gong sounded and we all processed into the grand dining room. A full thirty places were set out at the table. Although the Court had gas lighting, the table had been lit with several candelabras. Crystal and silver reflected the warm yellow flames. Small delicate arrangements of flowers lined the centre of the table at exactly the right height so one could still see across the table. Not that one would talk to the person opposite at such an event. Conversation was on a side to side basis and strictly rotational. I waited to see who I would be seated next to apart from my grandfather.
    ‘Renard Layfette,’ said a well-dressed man in his thirties. ‘I am a distant cousin of the Staplefords. Richenda will have mentioned me.’
    ‘I don’t believe so,’ I said carefully. Renard certainly bore the self-important air that all the Staplefords had. Dark-haired, like Bertram, I could see a family resemblance. ‘You are related to the second Lady Stapleford?’
    ‘Is not everyone related to everyone in our world?’ he said with a small wave of his hand. I detected a slight French accent this time, but really his English was excellent. I told him so.
    ‘I was raised to speak several languages at home,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It has been useful. I travel a lot.’
    My grandfather’s attention seemed to have been captured by the woman on the other side. She was small, stout and talking twenty to the dozen in a hurried undertones.
    ‘You like to travel?’ I asked my other dinner companion, who had not referred once to my status though he must have known.
    Again came the little shrug and a world weary sigh. ‘It has been necessary.’
    The soup arrived. It lay clear and brownish in the insignia stamped dish. No doubt it was highly fashionable. It smelled of fish and sprouts. I took a tentative sip. It tasted worse than it looked.
    ‘The English,’ said Renard with yet another shrug. ‘They cannot cook.’
    ‘I have had many good meals in the homes of my English friends,’ I said, forgetting for a moment that this was meant to be my first time in the country.
    ‘Cooked by a French cook, no doubt. Some hostesses are rightly proud of their French cooks. Others try to pretend it is an ordinary chef, but always if the food is good it will be a Frenchman cooking.’
    The footman removed my soup. He did not even bother asking if I had finished, but I thought I detected a commiserating demeanour.
    The voice of the woman on the other side of my grandfather floated over to me.