Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark Page A

are made on all through the stormy night.’
    â€˜There’s a couple been wandering the grounds all night,’
says Theo. ‘They came in the car and I wouldn’t let them out, as you ordered.
Now they’ve lost the keys of the car and they’re taking shelter under a tree.
They look a suspicious pair to me.’
    â€˜Forget them,’ says Mr Samuel. ‘They’re only extras.’
    â€˜Better go back to Clara,’ says Lister. ‘It’s nearly
eight o’clock. See that the gates are opened.’
    â€˜All right, Lister,’ says Theo in a hushed voice, looking
towards the library. Then he departs quickly through the open door, mounts his
bicycle and starts off up the drive. He gets drenched almost immediately for at
that moment the storm descends with full concentration on the Klopstocks’
country seat. Theo pedals vigorously, and rounding a bend he is forced to get
off his bicycle and press forward on foot along the loud storm-darkened avenue,
streaked every now and then as it is with a dart of lightning. On the way he
passes a clump of trees under one of which, shrinking into the bark, are the
couple of wandering friends from the car. Theo staggers onwards up the twisting
drive and at the porch of his house lets fall the bicycle, bends through the
torrent to the gates of the house, unlocks them and throws them open. Then he
returns to the lodge and tumbles indoors.
    Meanwhile the lightning, which strikes the clump of trees
so that the two friends huddled there are killed instantly without pain,
zig-zags across the lawns, illuminating the lily-pond and the sunken rose garden
like a self-stricken flash-photographer, and like a zip-fastener ripped from its
garment by a sexual maniac, it is flung slapdash across Lake Leman and back to
skim the rooftops of the house, leaving intact, however, the well-insulated
telephone wires which Lister, on the telephone to Geneva, has rather feared
might break down.
    Having alerted the police and quiveringly recommended an
ambulance with attendant doctors and nurses, Lister now telephones to the
discreet and well-appointed flat in Geneva which he prudently maintains, and
extends a welcome to the four journalists who have been Very waiting up all
night for the call, playing poker meanwhile, with the ash-trays piled high.
    â€˜Our four friends,’ Lister then instructs the household,
‘are to have first preference in anything you can say to them. They will, of
course, have the scandal exclusives which Mr Samuel and Mr McGuire have prepared
in the form of typescript, photographs and sound recordings. The television,
Associated Press and the local riff-raff are sure to question you wildly: answer
likewise — say anything to them, just anything, but keep them happy. Isn’t that
right, Clovis?’
    â€˜Yes, the arrangements between our four special friends,
ourselves, and our numbered accounts in the Swiss Trust Corporate can be left to
Lister. We don’t have any arrangements with the others. Keep them happy, that’s
all. For the television, throw your heads into your hands and sob, or display a
sad disapproval of your late employers.’
    â€˜I want to go to bed,’ says Heloise.
    â€˜I shall see that you are allowed to retire at the
earliest possible moment, Heloise.’
    â€˜Listen to Lister,’ says Eleanor.
    Lister then books a telephone call to the residence of
Count Rudolph Klopstock in Rio de Janeiro, and having done this, says to the
others, ‘There’s a delay to Brazil and they’re five hours back. We should get
the Count somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m. Rio time, and allowing for human nature
on the telephone exchange between here and there the news will get around pretty
quickly.’
    â€˜The brother ought to know,’ says Eleanor.
    â€˜Know what?’ says Lister.
    â€˜About the brother,’ says Eleanor.
    â€˜At the present moment,’ says Lister, ‘all