Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh Read Free Book Online

Tottenham. The boy, who was sucking his hand, looked resentfully through the window into the yard.
    The mince pies were set out on a lordly dish in the middle of the kitchen table. Troy saw with relief that they were small. Hilary explained that they must take their first bites in turn, making a wish as they did so.
    Afterwards Troy was to remember them as they stood sheepishly round the table. She was to think of those few minutes as almost the last spell of general tranquility that she experienced at Halberds.
    “You first, Auntie,” Hilary invited.
    “Aloud?” his aunt demanded. Rather hurriedly he assured her that her wish need not be articulate.
    “Just as well,” she said. She seized her pie, and took a prodigious bite out of it. As she munched she fixed her eyes upon Cressida Tottenham, and suddenly Troy was alarmed. “I know what’s she wishing,” Troy thought. “As well as if she were to bawl it out in our faces. She’s wishing the engagement will be broken. I’m sure of it.”
    Cressida herself came next. She made a great to-do over biting off the least possible amount and swallowing it as if it were medicine.
    “Did you wish?” Colonel Forrester asked anxiously.
    “I forgot,” she said and then screamed at the top of her voice. Fragments of mince pie escaped her lovely lips.
    Mr. Smith let out a four-letter word and they all exclaimed. Cressida was pointing at the window into the yard. Two cats, a piebald and a tabby, sat on the outer sill, their faces slightly distorted by the glass, their eyes staring and their mouths opening and shutting in concerted meows.
    “My dear
girl
,” Hilary said and made no attempt to disguise his exasperation.
    “My poor pussies,” Kittiwee chimed in like a sort of alto to a leading baritone.
    “I can’t take
cats
,” Cressida positively yelled.
    “In which case,” Mrs. Forrester composedly observed, “you
can
take yourself out of the kitchen.”
    “No, no,” pleaded the Colonel. “No, B. No, no, no! Dear me! Look here!”
    The cats now began to make excruciating noises with their claws on the windowpane. Troy, who liked cats and found them amusing, was almost sorry to see them abruptly cease this exercise, reverse themselves on the sill, and disappear, tails up. Cressida, however, clapped her hands to her ears, screamed again, and stamped her feet like an exotic dancer.
    Mr. Smith said drily, “No trouble!”
    But Colonel Forrester gently comforted Cressida with a wandering account of a brother-officer whose abhorrence of felines in some mysterious way brought about a deterioration in the lustre of his accoutrements. It was an incomprehensible narrative, but Cressida sat on a kitchen chair and stared at him and became quiet.
    “Never mind!” Hilary said on a note of quiet despair. “As we were.” He appealed to Troy: “Will you?” he asked.
    Troy applied herself to a mince pie, and as she did so there came into her mind a wish so ardent that she could almost have thought she spoke it aloud. “Don’t,” she found herself dottily wishing, “let anything beastly happen. Please.” She then complimented Kittiwee on his cooking.
    Colonel Forrester followed Troy. “You
would
be surprised,” he said, beaming at them, “if you knew about
my
wish.
That
you would.” He shut his eyes and heartily attacked his pie. “Delicious!” he said.
    Mr. Smith said: “How soft can you get!” and ate the whole of his pie with evident and noisy relish.
    Hilary brought up the rear, and when they had thanked Kittiwee they left the kitchen. Cressida said angrily that she was going to take two aspirins and go to bed until dinner time. “And I don’t,” she added, looking at her fiancé, “want to be disturbed.”
    “You need have no misgivings, my sweet,” he rejoined and his aunt gave a laugh that might equally have been called a snort. “Your uncle and I,” she said to Hilary, “will take the air, as usual, for ten minutes.”
    “But — Auntie —