Free Murder at Maddingley Grange by Caroline Graham Page B

the cheese.”
    â€œIt’s a full-time job keeping up with you. What cheese?”
    â€œA pound of Double Gloucester for tomorrow and after lunch on Sunday. What if someone wants some tonight?”
    â€œThought you said the freezer was full.”
    â€œYou can’t freeze cheese.”
    â€œFamily hold back then. I must say”—Simon smiled, hoping to jolly up the atmosphere—“you look smashing in that shiny thing.”
    â€œI don’t feel it.” This was true. Blue lamé slithered and slipped on chestnut leather. “I feel I’m going to start squeaking any minute.” To add to her discomfort Laurie was aware that her deep suntan stopped a good six inches from the neck of her dress. And that her recalcitrant hair, at the moment confined in a silver turban (sans egret), was just waiting its chance to sneak past those rigorous folds and bound about every which way.
    â€œHugh will be struck all of a heap,” continued Simon. “Where is he anyway?”
    â€œHow should I know?”
    â€œI see.” Simon lifted his lip rodent fashion and stuck out his front teeth.
    â€œYou don’t ‘see’ anything. Pacey isn’t like that.”
    â€œAll girls are like that given half a chance.”
    â€œHaven’t you got anything to do?”
    â€œAll done. I’ve even managed to dig up some beer and a spot of Guinness for the god-awful Gibbses.”
    â€œThey’re not awful. Mr. Gibbs was telling me he has a large business.”
    â€œProbably scrap metal.”
    â€œWith a staff of over two hundred.”
    â€œNonsense. How can a music-hall double act and a stuffed raccoon in drag run a business? He’s having you on.”
    â€œIf you’re rude to them, Simon, after taking all that money, I shall be furious.”
    â€œRude? When am I ever rude? I shall behave impeccably as I always do.” Simon perched on the desk near a large globe, varnished deep amber from years of exposure to Uncle George’s tobacco smoke. He spun it slowly, holding his finger on the very center.
    â€œD’you remember…Hey—” Laurie looked at him. “Do you remember what you used to call the equator?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œA menagerie lion running round the world.”
    Laurie closed her eyes more out of irritation than with a wish to recall the past. Yet suddenly there he was. She saw him as clearly as she had when she was seven. Loping along under a brazen sun, the wind stirring his mane, looking neither to left nor right. His great paws left prints in the sand like flowers. His eyes were triangles of golden light and he was kind.
    Laurie’s eyes filled with quick tears and she blinked them hard away. She felt tired and cross. She didn’t want to be bothered with all these people. Or with clean sheets and fresh flowers and Bath Olivers and cheese. Especially she didn’t want to be bothered with cheese. What she really wanted more than anything else was to be a child again in the kitchen garden with Mackintosh, helping to set the shallots. The fact that this was quite impossible she laid at Simon’s door. Everything was his fault. She opened her eyes, glared at him and said, unkindly:
    â€œYou’re very skeptical about Hugh and me. What about your own future? When are you going to fall in love?”
    â€œNever.” There was a sharp scraping sound. The globe stopped spinning and Simon studied his broken nail. “It’s a dead loss. So much wasted energy. Hours of heaving and sighing and mooning about and nothing to show for it at the end. Give me the clear-eyed pursuit of capitalism any day.”
    â€œSo you mean to marry money.”
    â€œI shall certainly ‘fall in love,’ as you so soggily put it, where money is.”
    â€œWhat about Rosemary Saville, then? She’s very pretty.”
    â€œAll heiresses are pretty. And I quote.”
    â€œOr perhaps