‘She’s called Billie Holiday,’ Kick said.‘Mother hates that I listen to her.’
They were silent, letting the music fill up the space between them.‘I can see why,’ Brigid said after a while.‘That voice does rather make one want to do terribly bad things … or at least, to be out in a world where it’s possible to do such things.’She looked around the cosy, neat bedroom.‘Do you ever want to kick and kick like a horse in a stall it hates?To break it all down?’Then she laughed.‘Of course you do.With a name like yours …’ She lay back on the bed, against the pillows, and Kick came and sat on the end of it, hands under her thighs, legs swinging in time to the music.‘It’s not that I hate it,’ Brigid continued.‘Not at all.But I do rather feel that it isn’tlife, if you see what I mean?Just sort of a waiting room for life.As though one were permanently sitting in the ladies’ first class at Paddington Station.Lots of things put on for one’s entertainment, of course – lunches, and tennis, and visits, but none of it quite real.’
‘I feel that more here than I did at home in New York,’ Kick said.‘There, everyone did what they did, just like that.Here, there’s a very great deal of waiting around alright.At first, I hated it.It made me so impatient.I’m getting better at it.But I don’t know if that’s good – to be better at waiting around?’
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ Brigid said with a laugh.‘I can’t see you ever being very good at it.’Then, ‘I say, how untidy you are.’She looked around the room, at the shoes scattered about the floor, the dressing table where an ivory-backed hairbrush lay surrounded by jars of cream, make-up, hair pins, a dusting of spilled powder over it all.
‘You sound like my mother,’ Kick said idly.
‘I’m sure I sound likeeveryone’smother.Mine wouldn’t be able to stand for it.She’d tidy it herself rather than look at it.’
‘My mother believes I must do things for myself and won’t let her maid tidy after me.’
‘In case you marry a poor man?’Brigid said sympathetically.Her own mother, Lady Iveagh, had drilled into her and Patsy that they mustn’t be wasteful or careless, for that very reason.
‘Goodness, no.’Kick laughed.‘Because it’s good for my soul.No one expects I’ll marry a poor man.I simply never meet any.’Something about the bluntness with which Kick said it made Brigid feel awkward, so she didn’t respond.
The record ended and Kick got up to change it, putting on something lighter and quicker.‘Charades is rather a good idea,’ Brigid said after a while.‘Especially if Elizabeth will play.No one takes a costume more seriously than she does.I once went to a party where she wore only a bedsheet, twisted into what she claimed was a toga, only it was a single bedsheet and not any bit big enough for a toga.’She began to giggle.‘More like a napkin held over her lap.As though she went to dinner but forgot her clothes.Too funny!The others will be awfully sticky though,’ she continued.‘Maureen won’t play, she only dresses up for her own games and tricks.And Chips will only do it if there’s someone he terribly wants to impress.’
‘And is there?’
‘No.I mean’ – she said hurriedly – ‘he wants to impress your parents, naturally, but not the way he would want to impress, well, someone royal.’
‘It’s OK,’ Kick said with a grin.‘I won’t take offence.’Then, ‘Well, what about Murder in the Dark?We play that a lot in the evenings at Hyannis Port.Although it barely gets properly dark there during the summer.’
‘We wouldn’t even have to wait,’ Brigid said eagerly, looking out at the rain.‘Once we draw the curtains, it’ll be plenty dark enough in an hour at this rate.Come on, let’s go down.’
They were last to the drawing room.Everyone else was there, and all looking rather bored.Except the ambassador and Doris, who sat apart and talked a lot together.Chips and Fritzi stood at the bookshelves, Chips pointing something out to the boy.Brigid caught the words ‘one of your ancestors’.Maureen played a complicated version of Patience, batting off advice from Elizabeth, while Honor sat beside them, engrossed in her book.Rose Kennedy had a book in her hands too, but she scarcely turned the pages, instead looking carefully around the room, giving everyone her attention for a moment, before moving on.Perhaps, Brigid thought, she gave the most attention to Duff, who sat by himself with a newspaper.He turned a page in one sharp movement so the paper crackled.
Outside, the wind cradled the house roughly, rocking it and throwing the occasional handful of rain against the windows.
‘You’re late,’ Maureen snapped, looking up.
‘Only a little,’ Brigid said soothingly.‘And we have a jolly plan for what to do.’
‘Why do we need a plan?’Maureen asked.
‘Of course we need a plan, isn’t that so, Kick?’
‘It’ll be fun,’ Kick said, as though reassuring a child.
Maureen frowned.
‘Murder in the Dark,’ Brigid said excitedly.‘If we turned off all the lights and drew the curtains, this room would be dark already.All we need is to make cards, pick and play.There’s a murderer, a victim, a detective, and everyone else is an innocent party.’
‘Oh yes,’ Elizabeth said, getting up and coming over to them.She looked, Brigid thought, decidedly odd – one of Honor’s flowered afternoon dresses looped up in handfuls around a belt so that it fell to just below her knees, and a cardigan dragged over her shoulders.Her hair straggled.But her face was alight with excitement.‘We could play in character?I was at a party once where we adopted parts as people from the novels of Miss Christie.I was Monsieur Poirot.It was the jolliest fun imaginable.I had a moustache drawn on with burned cork, and a silk scarf tossed over my shoulder.’
‘I suppose it might be amusing,’ Maureen said.She looked around the room.‘Honor, you are clearly the sacrificial victim.And Duff, I rather think you are the murderer.You look like you could kill any one of us just now.’
‘Only you,’ Brigid heard Duff mutter, before snapping the pages of his paper.
Elizabeth must have heard too, because she said, with a sly grin, ‘We could play in couples.Only we’d need to work out, are the couples playingwithone another, or against?’She looked from Duff to Maureen.‘And if against, are they to kill one another, or merely betray?’
‘You can’t choose,’ Kick said patiently.‘That’s why we make cards.It’s all a secret.That’s the point of it.’
It was Chips who Brigid looked to then.She saw him glance over at the ambassador, one eyebrow faintly raised.Whatever he saw in Kennedy’s face caused him to turn and say firmly, ‘No Murder in the Dark.It’s a nursery game.’
‘Spoilsport!’Brigid cried.‘Fritzi, say something!Perhaps you have influence with him?It’s terrific fun, and otherwise you will all simply sit here andtalkall afternoon.’
