Free Buffet for Unwelcome Guests by Christianna Brand

crockery, passing plates of chicken and ham. ‘Don’t over-do it, my dears,’ said Mr. Caxton, sardonically watching their endeavours. ‘You’re all out of the will now, you know.’
    It brought them up short: the crudeness, the brutality of it—standing staring back at him, the plates in their shaking hands. Half of them, probably, cared not two pins for five, or five-and-twenty pounds in Cyrus Caxton’s will, but they turned, nevertheless, upon the new heiress questioning—reproachful?—eyes. ‘Oh, but Cyrus, that’s not true,’ she cried; above his jeering protests insisted: ‘Cyrus has destroyed his old will, yes; but he’s made a new one and—well, I mean, no one has been forgotten, I’m sure, who was mentioned before.’
    The lunch progressed. Intent, perhaps, to show their disinterestedness, the dispossessed scuttled back and forth with the cold meats, potato mayonnaise, sliced cucumber—poured delicious barley water (for Mr. Caxton was a rabid teetotaller) into cut glass tumblers, worthy of better things. The bridegroom munched his way through even the despised cold viands in a manner that boded ill, thought Inspector Cockrill, for the wretched Elizabeth, suddenly coming alive to the horror of what she had taken upon herself. She sat silent and shrinking and made hardly any move to assist with the serving. Son Theo carved and sliced, Step-son Bill handed plates, even young Dr. Ross wandered round with the salad bowl; but the bride sat still and silent and those three, thought Cockie, could hardly drag their eyes from the small white face and the dawning terror there. The meat plates were removed, the peaches lifted one by one from their tall bottles and placed, well soused with syrup, on their flowery plates. Step-son Bill dispensed the silver dessert spoons and forks, fanned out ready on the sideboard. The guests sat civilly, spoons poised, ready to begin.
    Cyrus Caxton waited for no one. He gave a last loud trumpeting blow to his nose, stuffed away his handkerchief, picked up the spoon beside his plate and somewhat ostentatiously looked to see if it was clean: plunged spoon and fork into the peach, spinning dizzily before him in its syrup, and, scooping off a large chunk, slithered it into his mouth: stiffened—stared about him with a wild surmise—gave one gurgling roar of mingled rage and pain, turned first white, then purple, then an even more terrifying dingy, dark red; and pitched forward across the table with his face in his plate. Elizabeth cried out: ‘He’s swallowed the peach stone!’
    Dr. Ross was across the room in three strides, grasped the man by the hair and chin and laid him back in his chair. The face looked none the more lovely for being covered in syrup and he wiped it clean with one swipe of a table napkin; and stood for what seemed a long moment, hands on the arms of the chair, gazing down, intent and abstracted, at the spluttering mouth and rolling eyes. Like a terrier, Elizabeth was to say later to Inspector Cockrill, alert and suspicious, snuffing the scent. Then with another of his swift movements, he was hauling Mr. Caxton out of his chair, lowering him to the floor; calling out, ‘Elizabeth!—my bag. On a chair in the hall.’ But she seemed struck motionless by the sudden horror of it all and only stammered out, imploring, ‘Theo?’ Stout Theo, nearest the door, bestirred himself to dash out into the hall, appearing a moment later with the bag. Step-son Bill, kneeling with the doctor beside the heaving body, took it from him, opened it out. Elizabeth, shuddering, said again: ‘He must have swallowed the stone.’
    The doctor ignored her. He had caught up the fallen table-napkin and was using it to grasp, with his left hand, the man’s half-swallowed tongue and pull it forward to free the air-passages; at the same time with his right groping blindly towards the medical bag. ‘A finger-stall—it’s just on top, somewhere….’ Bill found it immediately and