Page 137 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

He wouldn’t need much for a trip to Egypt – living was so cheap out there. He had done his duty – damn it, he’d done everything expected of him! Married, brought in money, got an heir. It was time he did something for himself. His father had spent his whole life indulging himself. Giles wasn’t asking for his whole life, just a little bit, just a break from it all, just something. KV20 was a royal tomb, one of the earliest. Probably the burial place of Thutmose I. Suppose there were intact sarcophagi in there? Identifiable mummies? And what of KV60 – was that really Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, who wore a false beard as a sign of rank, and reigned successfully for such a long time? Why had Carter closed it up again? There was so much to find out. He had to go. No reasonable person could deny him.

He ran up the steps at the front of Aunt Caroline’s house, and the door opened just before he reached it, in the unsettling way he had not yet quite got used to. He could tell from the suppressed air of excitement that something had happened, and pretty soon he was enveloped in a confused story of how a mad runaway horse had almost killed his wife and child, and how Mrs Cowling had thrown herself under the horse without regard to her own life and saved them both. It took a bit of untangling before he understood that Nina was not actually dead (something that seemed to be mildly regretted, though he realised it was only for the sake of the narrative and not because anyone wished her ill) and that no harm had come to Kitty or Louis either.

In the drawing-room he found Kitty reclining on a sofa with Alice sitting nearby and Aunt Caroline on the other side clutching a smelling-bottle (how traditional of her, he thought). And on the other side of the fireplace, Nina was still there, Nina, seeming to attract all the light in the room to herself, leaving everything else in dusk.

‘Now what’s this I hear?’ he said. ‘Runaway horses and acts of bravery? People snatched from the jaws of death?’

‘It was nothing of the sort,’ Nina said stoutly, looking at him as if feeding something inside her that had been starving to death. He knew that was how she felt because he felt the same. ‘Everyone’s making such a fuss. All that happened was that a horse was startled by a motor-car making that exploding noise. It reared up, and I caught its bridle and held it so it couldn’t bolt. No one was ever in any danger.’

‘It was rearing up right over the perambulator,’ Kitty said faintly. ‘I thought it was going to kill Louis. Nina saved our son’s life, Giles. She was so brave.’

‘Please, Kitty, don’t talk like that,’ Nina said. ‘I wasn’t brave at all.’

The other three women started to talk at once, Trump helpfully added some barking, and into the scene rushed Richard, crying, ‘I seem to have missed all the fun! What’s this I hear, about you jumping onto a runaway motor-car and stopping it from killing hundreds of pedestrians? How did you learn to drive a motor-car, Mrs Cowling? You are a dark horse!’

‘It was nothing of the sort—’ Nina began desperately.

Giles began to laugh. ‘No use, you’ll be a heroine despite yourself!’

‘One thing is sure, you’ll have to stay here for now,’ Richard said. ‘There’s a crowd gathering outside and I saw newspaper reporters.’

‘Of course she must stay,’ Giles said quickly. ‘We ought to have a celebration dinner. What did we have on tonight?’

‘The Richboroughs’ ball,’ said Aunt Caroline.

‘They’ll never notice if we’re not there,’ said Richard. ‘It will be an unholy crush anyway’

‘Maud will want to take Rachel.’

‘They can go – and Linda too. The rest of us will dine at home and give thanks for the preservation of our loved ones. What were you doing this evening, Nina?’

‘Man and Superman at the Royal Court,’ said Nina. ‘But I don’t think Mr Cowling much wanted to go. Shaw, you know – requires a lot of concentration.’

‘Good, then you won’t mind if I send word round to St James’s Square and tell him to come here instead?’ He anticipated her objection. ‘Don’t worry about changing – we shan’t dress.’

‘Excellent idea!’ Richard said. ‘We could do with a cosy night in, after all this gallivanting. I’m sure we’re all worn out with gaiety! And Nina shall tell us in blood-curdling detail exactly what happened and what was passing through her mind as she looked death in the face.’

‘You all joke,’ Kitty said, ‘but she was very brave.’

‘I wasn’t brave,’ Nina asserted.

‘You were!’

‘Oh, this is going to be fun!’ said Richard.

And Giles had forgotten for the moment all about Egypt.

Crooks had taken over the table in the corner of the ironing room, which was rarely wanted in the evening, and was installed there with Sam and his copy of the Good Book. It wasn’t ideal for teaching reading, with so many long words and with the print being so small, but it had the advantage that Sam already knew a lot of the passages by heart, having heard them in church every Sunday of his life. And a lot of the stories were familiar, too, from Sunday-school. If he stuck to the better-known bits . . . Sam wasn’t showing much progress so far, but one thing Crooks had in quantities was patience. He was willing to go on for far longer at a session than Sam was.

A shadow passed the door, and Crooks’s heart sank when he saw it was Hook, stalking past with a jacket over his arm, doubling back when he saw them. His bulging eyes surveyed the scene. His face was so thin you could see the muscles in it move as he assembled an unpleasant grin.

‘Oh, very cosy!’ he said. ‘What d’you call this, then?’

‘I’m teaching Sam to read, as you very well know,’ said Crooks, trying for dignity.

‘I know what you call it, Crooky. I was talking to Sam.’ Sam looked up, and blushed automatically. Hook’s expression had that effect on a lot of people. ‘You want to watch him, Sam, my lad. He does you a favour, you have to do him one back – that’ll be expected.’

Sam only looked bewildered. ‘Mr Crooks is being kind—’ he mumbled.