The Seventh Guest

Chapter One: The Invitation

The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which Clive Rutherford always considered the most dishonest day of the week. Mondays announced themselves with brutal clarity. Wednesdays sat comfortably in the middle of things. But Tuesdays pretended to be ordinary while smuggling in the unexpected.

He found the envelope between his gas bill and a catalogue for waterproof galoshes, its cream-colored paper heavier and finer than anything the postman usually delivered to his modest flat in Marylebone. The handwriting was precise, almost architectural, each letter drawn with the deliberation of someone accustomed to signing contracts rather than writing personal correspondence.

Clive turned it over. Embossed on the flap was a crest he didn't recognize—a stag rampant above a pair of crossed keys—and beneath it, in small copperplate: Fenmore Hall, Wiltshire.

He slit the envelope with a butter knife and unfolded the single sheet inside.

Dear Mr. Rutherford,

You do not know me, though I have followed your exploits with considerable interest. The business with the Colchester diamonds was particularly impressive, and the resolution of the Admiralty cipher affair showed a mind I should very much like to have under my roof.

I am hosting a small weekend gathering at my country estate, Fenmore Hall, commencing Friday the fourteenth of October. The company will be intimate—seven guests in total—and the conversation, I trust, stimulating. I have a matter of some personal significance to announce, and I confess I should feel more at ease making it in the presence of a man with your reputation for discretion and clear thinking.

A car will be sent to Salisbury station to collect you at half past four. You need bring nothing but yourself and an appetite. My cook is exceptional.

Yours sincerely,
Bernard Loxley

Clive read the letter twice, then set it on the kitchen table beside his half-eaten toast. He knew the name. Bernard Loxley had made his fortune in chemical manufacturing during the twenties and thirties—Loxley Industrial Compounds, producers of everything from commercial dyes to agricultural pesticides. He had retired five years ago, selling his controlling interest to a consortium and retreating, so the society pages reported, to a sprawling country pile in Wiltshire with a wife thirty years his junior.

The invitation was unusual but not unprecedented. Clive's modest fame as an amateur detective—he preferred the term "private reasoner," though no one else used it—had earned him occasional invitations from the wealthy and the anxious. Sometimes they wanted entertainment, a parlor trick at dinner. Sometimes they wanted reassurance. And sometimes, though they rarely said so directly, they wanted protection.

The phrase "a matter of some personal significance" nagged at him. It was deliberately vague, the kind of language a man used when he wanted to say more but feared putting it in writing.

Clive finished his toast, washed the plate, and wrote his acceptance.

***

The train from Paddington deposited him at Salisbury on a grey afternoon that smelled of wet stone and coal smoke. October had turned the countryside to rust and amber, and a thin rain was falling, the kind that seemed less to descend from the sky than to simply materialize in the air.

A black Daimler was waiting in the station forecourt, its driver a taciturn man in a peaked cap who introduced himself as Phelps and said nothing further for the duration of the forty-minute drive. The road wound through villages of thatched cottages and past fields where sheep stood motionless in the drizzle, looking like grey stones someone had scattered across the grass.

Fenmore Hall announced itself gradually. First came the stone wall, eight feet high and topped with lichen, running alongside the road for nearly half a mile. Then the gates—wrought iron, the same stag-and-keys crest worked into the metalwork—standing open. The drive curved through an avenue of elms whose leaves were turning gold, and then the house appeared.

It was enormous. Not beautiful, exactly—it had the slightly aggressive grandeur of a building that had been added to by successive generations, each determined to outdo the last—but undeniably impressive. The original structure appeared to be Jacobean, all mullioned windows and ornamental chimneys, but a Victorian wing extended to the east, its red brick jarring against the older stonework. A conservatory clung to the south face like a glass barnacle.

Phelps brought the car to a stop before the front entrance, a portico supported by columns that were trying very hard to be Greek. Clive climbed out, retrieved his overnight bag, and looked up at the house. Somewhere on the second floor, a curtain twitched.

The front door opened before he could reach it, and a butler of the old school materialized on the threshold. He was tall, silver-haired, and possessed the serene expression of a man who had spent decades witnessing human folly without allowing it to disturb his digestion.

"Mr. Rutherford. Welcome to Fenmore Hall. I am Jessup. Mr. Loxley is expecting you."

"Thank you, Jessup. Am I the last to arrive?"

"The last but one, sir. Miss Kirwan's train was delayed. She is expected within the hour."

Jessup led him through a entrance hall that could have comfortably housed a game of cricket. The floor was black and white marble, arranged in a chessboard pattern. A staircase of dark oak rose to a gallery lined with portraits of people who looked as though they had never once been amused. The air smelled of beeswax and, faintly, of cigars.

"Mr. Loxley asked that you be shown to the library upon arrival, sir. The other guests are gathered there for tea."

Clive followed the butler down a corridor hung with hunting prints and through a pair of double doors into a room that justified its name. The library at Fenmore Hall was two stories high, its walls lined floor to ceiling with books behind glass-fronted cases. A fire burned in a grate large enough to roast an ox, and before it, arranged on sofas and armchairs upholstered in bottle-green leather, sat the other guests.

Bernard Loxley rose to greet him. He was a large man in his late sixties, broad-shouldered and heavy-jawed, with a full head of white hair and eyes that were startlingly blue beneath thick brows. His handshake was firm to the point of aggression.

"Rutherford! Delighted you could come. Absolutely delighted. Let me introduce everyone."

He steered Clive toward the group with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to managing rooms.

"My wife, Pauline."

Pauline Loxley was perhaps thirty-five, dark-haired and striking, with the kind of angular beauty that photographs well. She wore a cream silk blouse and a rope of pearls, and she smiled at Clive with a warmth that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"How lovely to meet you, Mr. Rutherford. Bernard has told me all about your adventures."

"Only the ones fit for polite company, I hope."

"My daughter, Constance."

Constance Loxley was the opposite of her stepmother in almost every respect. Where Pauline was sleek, Constance was angular. Where Pauline was polished, Constance was plain. She was in her early forties, with her father's strong jaw and none of his easy charm. She wore a tweed skirt and a cardigan that looked as though it had been borrowed from a much larger person, and she regarded Clive with an expression that hovered between suspicion and curiosity.

"Father collects people," she said by way of greeting. "I suppose you're this weekend's specimen."

"Constance," Bernard said mildly.

"I don't mind," Clive said. "I've been called worse by better."

Something that might have been the ghost of a smile crossed Constance's face.

"Hugh Trafford, my solicitor."

Trafford was a neat, compact man of about fifty, with thinning sandy hair and the cautious manner of someone who spent his professional life anticipating disaster. He shook Clive's hand with a grip that was precisely calibrated—firm enough to suggest competence, gentle enough to suggest he wasn't a threat.

"A pleasure, Mr. Rutherford. I hope you won't have cause to exercise your professional talents this weekend."

"I'm strictly an amateur, Mr. Trafford. And I'm off duty."

"Walter Grieves, my old partner."

Grieves was a bear of a man, nearly as large as Bernard but running to fat where Bernard had kept his bulk. He had a red face, a walrus moustache, and hands like dinner plates. He didn't rise from his chair but raised a teacup in salute.

"Rutherford. Heard about the Colchester business. Good show."

"Thank you."

"And this is Leonard Fitch."

The final occupant of the room had been so still that Clive hadn't noticed him immediately. Leonard Fitch sat in a wingback chair slightly apart from the others, a teacup balanced on his knee. He was a thin man of perhaps forty, with sandy hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and the sort of unremarkable face that the eye slides over without registering. He wore a brown corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows and had the slightly weathered look of someone who spent a great deal of time outdoors.

"Mr. Rutherford." His voice was quiet and pleasant. "I'm afraid I'm rather the odd one out this weekend. I'm a birdwatcher. Bernard was kind enough to invite me because the grounds here are supposed to be excellent for spotted flycatchers."

"Leonard is being modest," Bernard said. "He's written articles for the Ornithological Society journal. Quite the expert."

"Hardly an expert," Fitch said. "Merely an enthusiast."

Clive studied him for a moment. There was something about the man that didn't quite fit—not dishonesty, exactly, but a kind of careful self-containment that went beyond mere shyness. He filed the observation away and accepted a cup of tea from Jessup, who had materialized silently with a fresh pot.

The conversation drifted to safe topics—the weather, the drive from London, the state of the roads. Clive listened more than he spoke, a habit that had served him well. He noted that Pauline and Constance did not address each other directly. He observed that Walter Grieves drank his tea with the mechanical regularity of a man who wished it were something stronger. He saw that Hugh Trafford's eyes kept returning to Bernard with an expression that might have been anxiety or might have been resentment.

And he noticed that Leonard Fitch, for all his claims of being an outsider, watched everyone in the room with a quiet, unblinking attention that had nothing to do with birdwatching.

The last guest arrived at half past five, in a flurry of apologies and expensive perfume. Daphne Kirwan was a woman of perhaps forty-five who had clearly decided that age was a suggestion rather than a fact. She was handsome, vivacious, and dressed with the kind of casual elegance that costs a great deal of money to achieve. Her auburn hair was swept up beneath a hat adorned with a small feather, and she entered the library as though she were walking onto a stage.

"Bernard, darling, I'm so sorry. The train was an absolute horror. Something on the line at Andover—a cow, they said, though I suspect it was incompetence. Pauline, you look divine. Constance, how well you look. Hugh, Walter, how perfectly lovely."

Her gaze landed on Clive and brightened.

"And you must be the famous detective. Bernard promised me someone interesting."

"I do my best," Clive said.

"I'm sure you do."

She turned to Leonard Fitch and faltered, just slightly, as though she had expected to find the chair empty.

"I don't think we've met."

"Leonard Fitch," he said. "Birdwatcher."

"How extraordinary," Daphne said, in a tone that suggested it was anything but.

Jessup announced that dinner would be served at eight and that rooms had been prepared. Clive was shown to a comfortable chamber on the first floor, with a view of the gardens and, beyond them, a line of dark trees marking the edge of a wood. The rain had intensified, and the sky to the west was the colour of a bruise.

He unpacked his bag, washed his face, and stood at the window for a long moment, watching the rain.

Seven guests. An announcement. A house full of people with complicated relationships to their host.

He had a feeling that his weekend off duty was going to be nothing of the kind.