Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch Page A

that’s all …”
    I had followed her to our bedroom where she had retreated to calm down, and as we faced each other we could hear the charwoman talking good-naturedly to Sandy as she worked in the drawing-room below us. Primrose was at nursery school as usual. I was supposed to be on my way to a diocesan committee meeting, and I was acutely conscious of the clock ticking on the bedside table as I was obliged to delay my departure.
    “I know how much you loved Willowmead,” I said, “but we’ve been happy in Starbridge too and we’re going to go on being happy here.”
    “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
    “To be honest, I find the Starmouths intimidating as well. But one can’t spend one’s life cowering in corners just because one feels socially inferior!”
    “No, of course not. Will there be a maid, do you think, to unpack our suitcases? I don’t want anyone seeing my darned underwear.”
    “In that case I’ll tell the servant we don’t require help with the unpacking. Now, Grace, stop worrying yourself into a frenzy, there’s a good girl, and make up your mind you’re going to be strong, brave and resourceful!”
    “Yes. All right. I’ll try,” she said, but my heart sank as her shoulders drooped.
    Willing myself not to despair, I hurried off to my meeting at the diocesan office on Eternity Street.
    3
    Starmouth Court stood not, as might be assumed, near the port of Starmouth, in the south of the diocese, but eighteen miles from London in the county of Surrey; the Earl’s connection with Starmouth was lost in the mists of antiquity. When we eventually arrived at our destination on a sunlit Saturday morning in July, I was just as horrified as Grace to discover not a friendly country house but a tall stout elderly mansion of forbidding proportions. Accustomed though I was to calling at the various grand houses in my archdeaconry, I had never been invited to stay the night in these places and the thought of being a guest in the Starmouths’ overpoweringly dignified country seat made me feel for a moment like a fallen woman obliged to take refuge with a formidable maiden aunt.
    Built high on a hillside, the house was surrounded by trees and approached by a long winding drive which strained both our nerves and the engine of the chauffeur-driven motor which our hostess had sent to meet us at the station. “ ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came,’ ” I muttered to Grace before the Dark Tower was revealed as the plump Queen Anne palace. I allowed myself one quick shudder before resolving fiercely to appear self-possessed. “Isn’t it exactly like the country house in a detective story?” I murmured to Grace with a heroic attempt at nonchalance. “I foresee corpses in the library, a sinister butler lurking behind the green baize door and Hercule Poirot hovering in the shrubbery!”
    But Grace was too terrified to reply.
    We were admitted by a stately footman to a hall the size of a tennis court. Vast pictures of men in togas were suspended from points so remote as to be barely visible. An enormous arrangement of flowers stood in what appeared to be a pseudo-Greek vase. Then I realised there was nothing pseudo about the vase. It had that dim ancient look which is impossible to reproduce, and it reminded me of countless visits to the British Museum on wet Saturday afternoons in my childhood when Willy and I, boarded out with strict Methodists, had taken refuge once a week in the sights of London.
    “Nice flowers,” I said casually to Grace in an automatic effort to signal to the footman that I found the hall itself too mundane to merit a comment. “Very well arranged.”
    I had barely finished speaking when a door banged, footsteps pattered swiftly in our direction down a distant corridor, and the next moment someone was bursting joyously into the hall. A familiar peal of laughter rang out. A well-remembered voice cried: “Welcome to Starmouth Court!” And with horrified delight I recognised