“I wasn’t invited,” I said. “And anyway I’m sure it will be loads of fun here.”

“Well, we’ve got our share of excitement, as it turns out. You heard the ghastly news, I suppose.”

“I told her about the escaped convicts and about the man managing to kill himself in our apple tree.”

“It was a pear tree, as it happens,” Sir Oswald said, “but it makes no difference. The local bobbies were full of bright ideas. Suggested he might have come into our orchard to poach pheasants. Utter rubbish, I told them. You don’t shoot pheasants from trees. They are ground birds. Idiots, the lot of them. And you don’t shoot pheasants with a rook rifle either. No, it’s quite obvious to me that he was rigging up some kind of stupid trap. He had the wire with him. Then his weight broke a branch, he slipped and the gun went off in his face. Nasty way to go, but the blighter had it coming.”

He looked down at himself. “God, I look a sight, don’t I? Been out with the damned police all day. Dinner at the normal hour then?”

“If the servants have managed to cook it and set the table while being cross-questioned by police all day,” Lady H-G said.

“I’d better go and change.“

Lady Hawse-Gorzley got to her feet. “And I should give Georgiana a tour of the house and show her where she will be sleeping so that she has time to freshen up and change for dinner. Come along, my dear. This way.”

She led me on a whirlwind tour—lovely old dining room with a polished table running the length of it, library, morning room, music room and at the back even a ballroom with the air about it of being long out of use. Lady Hawse-Gorzley chatted incessantly like one who hasn’t had company for a long time, which made me wonder why she had suddenly decided to have a large house party this Christmas.

“So how many guests are you expecting?” I asked when she paused momentarily for breath. “You said a large party.”

“Let me see.” She stared out across the expanse of the ballroom as if trying to picture people in it. “Colonel and Mrs. Rathbone. Charming couple, just back from India, you know. Looking forward to a good old-fashioned English Christmas again. Then there are Mr. and Mrs. Upthorpe from Yorkshire, with their daughter, Ethel. He owns some kind of large factory up there. Trade, I know, but delightful people nonetheless.”

She paused to take a breath. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Mr. and Mrs. Wexler from America with their daughter. Most looking forward to some lively transatlantic conversation, I can tell you. And then there is someone I’m sure you already know. The dowager countess Albury and her companion. Do you know her? No? I’m surprised. She’s someone who has moved in the highest levels of society, but maybe not in your time.”

While she talked she ran her finger over a couple of marble statues, looking for dust, adjusted sprigs of holly in vases and then led me out of the ballroom again, talking over her shoulder. “And then a couple of local friends—Captain and Mrs. Sechrest. He’s a navy man. You’ll like them. And Johnnie Protheroe. You can’t have a party without Johnnie. Life and soul of any gathering. Most amusing. Let me see—that makes thirteen, doesn’t it?” She stopped her forward progress and turned back to me with a fleeting worried look. “Oh, dear. I’m glad I’m not superstitious or that would be unlucky, wouldn’t it? But then, I haven’t counted you and you can count as a guest, can’t you? So that would make fourteen. And the rest are family, brought in to boost the numbers.”