Spider’s Web

Neither Clarissa nor Sir Rowland could think of anything to say in reply, and just as the gardener opened her mouth to speak again the telephone rang. ‘I’ll answer it,’ she bellowed. She crossed to the phone and lifted the receiver. ‘Hello—yes,’ she barked into the mouthpiece, wiping the top of the table with a corner of her overall as she spoke. ‘This is Copplestone Court—You want Mrs Brown?—Yes, she’s here.’

Miss Peake held out the receiver, and Clarissa stubbed out her cigarette, went over to the phone, and took the receiver from her.

‘Hello,’ said Clarissa, ‘This is Mrs Hailsham-Brown.—Hello—hello.’ She looked at Miss Peake. ‘How odd,’ she exclaimed. ‘They seem to have rung off.’

As Clarissa replaced the receiver, Miss Peake suddenly darted to the console table and set it back against the wall. ‘Excuse me,’ she boomed, ‘but Mr Sellon always liked this table flat against the wall.’

Clarissa surreptitiously pulled a face at Sir Rowland, but hastened nevertheless to assist Miss Peake with the table. ‘Thank you,’ said the gardener. ‘And,’ she added, ‘you will be careful about marks made with glasses on the furniture, won’t you, Mrs Brown-Hailsham.’ Clarissa looked anxiously at the table as the gardener corrected herself. ‘I’m sorry—I mean Mrs Hailsham-Brown.’ She laughed in a hearty fashion. ‘Oh well, Brown-Hailsham, Hailsham-Brown,’ she continued. ‘It’s really all the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not, Miss Peake,’ Sir Rowland declared, with very distinct enunciation. ‘After all, a horse chestnut is hardly the same thing as a chestnut horse.’

While Miss Peake was laughing jovially at this, Hugo came into the room. ‘Hello, there,’ she greeted him. ‘I’m getting a regular ticking off. Quite sarcastic, they’re being.’ Going across to Hugo, she thumped him on the back, and then turned to the others. ‘Well, good night, all,’ she shouted. ‘I must be toddling back. Give me the broccoli.’

Sir Rowland handed it over. ‘Horse chestnut—chestnut horse,’ she boomed at him. ‘Jolly good—I must remember that.’ With another boisterous laugh she disappeared through the French windows.

Hugo watched her leave, and then turned to Clarissa and Sir Rowland. ‘How on earth does Henry bear that woman?’ he wondered aloud.

‘He does actually find her very hard to take,’ Clarissa replied. She picked up Pippa’s book from the easy chair, put it on the table and collapsed into the chair as Hugo responded, ‘I should think so. She’s so damned arch! All that hearty schoolgirl manner.’

‘A case of arrested development, I’m afraid,’ Sir Rowland added, shaking his head.

Clarissa smiled. ‘I agree she’s maddening,’ she said, ‘but she’s a very good gardener and, as I keep telling everyone, she goes with the house, and since the house is so wonderfully cheap—’

‘Cheap? Is it?’ Hugo interrupted her. ‘You surprise me.’

‘Marvellously cheap,’ Clarissa told him. ‘It was advertised. We came down and saw it a couple of months ago, and took it then and there for six months, furnished.’

‘Whom does it belong to?’ Sir Rowland asked.

‘It used to belong to a Mr Sellon,’ Clarissa replied. ‘But he died. He was an antique dealer in Maidstone.’

‘Ah, yes!’ Hugo exclaimed. ‘That’s right. Sellon and Brown. I once bought a very nice Chippendale mirror from their shop in Maidstone. Sellon lived out here in the country, and used to go into Maidstone every day, but I believe he sometimes brought customers out here to see things that he kept in the house.’

‘Mind you,’ Clarissa told them both, ‘there are one or two disadvantages about this house. Only yesterday, a man in a violent check suit drove up in a sports car and wanted to buy that desk.’ She pointed to the desk. ‘I told him that it wasn’t ours and therefore we couldn’t sell it, but he simply wouldn’t believe me and kept on raising the price. He went up to five hundred pounds in the end.’

‘Five hundred pounds!’ exclaimed Sir Rowland, sounding really startled. He went across to the desk. ‘Good Lord!’ he continued. ‘Why, even at the Antique Dealers’ Fair I wouldn’t have thought it would fetch anything near to that. It’s a pleasant enough object, but surely not especially valuable.’

Hugo joined him at the desk, as Pippa came back into the room. ‘I’m still hungry,’ she complained.

‘You can’t be,’ Clarissa told her firmly.

‘I am,’ Pippa insisted. ‘Milk and chocolate biscuits and a banana aren’t really filling.’ She made for the armchair and flung herself into it.

Sir Rowland and Hugo were still contemplating the desk. ‘It’s certainly a nice desk,’ Sir Rowland observed. ‘Quite genuine, I imagine, but not what I’d call a collector’s piece. Don’t you agree, Hugo?’

‘Yes, but perhaps it’s got a secret drawer with a diamond necklace in it,’ Hugo suggested facetiously.

‘It has got a secret drawer,’ Pippa chimed in.

‘What?’ Clarissa exclaimed.

‘I found a book in the market, all about secret drawers in old furniture,’ Pippa explained. ‘So I tried looking at desks and things all over the house. But this is the only one that’s got a secret drawer.’ She got up from the armchair. ‘Look,’ she invited them. ‘I’ll show you.’

She went over to the desk and opened one of its pigeon-holes. While Clarissa came and leaned over the sofa to watch, Pippa slid her hand into the pigeon-hole. ‘See,’ she said as she did so, ‘you slide this out, and there’s a sort of little catch thing underneath.’

‘Humph!’ Hugo grunted. ‘I don’t call that very secret.’

‘Ah, but that’s not all,’ Pippa went on. ‘You press this thing underneath—and a little drawer flies out.’ Again she demonstrated, and a small drawer shot out of the desk. ‘See?’

Hugo took the drawer and picked a small piece of paper out of it. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what’s this, I wonder?’ He read aloud. ‘“Sucks to you”.’

‘What!’ Sir Rowland exclaimed, and Pippa went off into a gale of laughter. The others joined in, and Sir Rowland playfully shook Pippa, who pretended to punch him in return as she boasted, ‘I put that there!’

‘You little villain!’ said Sir Rowland, ruffling her hair. ‘You’re getting as bad as Clarissa with your silly tricks.’

‘Actually,’ Pippa told them, ‘there was an envelope with an autograph of Queen Victoria in it. Look, I’ll show you.’ She dashed to the bookshelves, while Clarissa went to the desk, replaced the drawers, and closed the pigeon-hole.

At the bookshelves, Pippa opened a small box on one of the lower shelves, took out an old envelope containing three scraps of paper, and displayed them to the assembled company.

‘Do you collect autographs, Pippa?’ Sir Rowland asked her.

‘Not really,’ replied Pippa. ‘Only as a side-line.’ She handed one of the pieces of paper to Hugo, who glanced at it and passed it on to Sir Rowland.

‘A girl at school collects stamps, and her brother’s got a smashing collection himself,’ Pippa told them. ‘Last autumn he thought he’d got one like the one he saw in the paper—a Swedish something or other which was worth hundreds of pounds.’ As she spoke, she handed the two remaining autographs and the envelope to Hugo, who passed them on to Sir Rowland.

‘My friend’s brother was awfully excited,’ Pippa continued, ‘and he took the stamp to a dealer. But the dealer said it wasn’t what he thought it was, though it was quite a good stamp. Anyway, he gave him five pounds for it.’

Sir Rowland handed two of the autographs back to Hugo, who passed them on to Pippa. ‘Five pounds is pretty good, isn’t it?’ Pippa asked him, and Hugo grunted his agreement.

Pippa looked down at the autographs. ‘How much do you think Queen Victoria’s autograph would be worth?’ she wondered aloud.

‘About five to ten shillings, I should think,’ Sir Rowland told her, as he looked at the envelope he was still holding.

‘There’s John Ruskin’s here too, and Robert Browning’s,’ Pippa told them.

‘They’re not worth much either, I’m afraid,’ said Sir Rowland, handing the remaining autograph and the envelope to Hugo, who passed them on to Pippa, murmuring sympathetically as he did so, ‘Sorry, my dear. You’re not doing very well, are you?’

‘I wish I had Neville Duke’s and Roger Bannister’s,’ Pippa murmured wistfully. ‘These historical ones are rather mouldy, I think.’ She replaced the envelope and autographs in the box, placed the box back on the shelf, and then began to back towards the hall door. ‘Can I see if there are any more chocolate biscuits in the larder, Clarissa?’ she asked, hopefully.

‘Yes, if you like,’ Clarissa told her, smiling.

‘We must be off,’ said Hugo, following Pippa towards the door and calling up the staircase, ‘Jeremy! Hi! Jeremy!’

‘Coming,’ Jeremy shouted back as he hurried down the stairs carrying a golf club.

‘Henry ought to be home soon,’ Clarissa murmured, to herself as much as to the others.

Hugo went across to the French windows, calling to Jeremy, ‘Better go out this way. It’s nearer.’ He turned back to Clarissa. ‘Goodnight, Clarissa dear,’ he said. ‘Thank you for putting up with us. I’ll probably go straight home from the club, but I promise to send your weekend guests back to you in one piece.’