Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie [4]
Like all parties, it went slightly stickily at first. The brooms were admired, they were very small miniature brooms, and on the whole the decorating of them had not reached a very high standard of merit, ‘which makes it easier,’ said Mrs Drake in an aside to one of her friends. ‘And it’s a very useful thing because I mean there are always one or two children one knows only too well won’t win a prize at anything else, so one can cheat a little over this.’
‘So unscrupulous, Rowena.’
‘I’m not really. I just arrange so that things should be fair and evenly divided. The whole point is that everyone wants to win something.’
‘What’s the Flour Game?’ asked Ariadne Oliver.
‘Oh yes, of course, you weren’t here when we were doing it. Well, you just fill a tumbler with flour, press it in well, then you turn it out in a tray and place a sixpence on top of it. Then everyone slices a slice off it very carefully so as not to tumble the sixpence off. As soon as someone tumbles the sixpence off, that person goes out. It’s a sort of elimination. The last one left in gets the sixpence of course. Now then, away we go.’
And away they went. Squeals of excitement were heard coming from the library where bobbing for apples went on, and competitors returned from there with wet locks and having disposed a good deal of water about their persons.
One of the most popular contests, at any rate among the girls, was the arrival of the Hallowe’en witch played by Mrs Goodbody, a local cleaning woman who, not only having the necessary hooked nose and chin which almost met, was admirably proficient in producing a semi-cooing voice which had definitely sinister under-tones and also produced magical doggerel rhymes.
‘Now then, come along, Beatrice, is it? Ah, Beatrice. A very interesting name. Now you want to know what your husband is going to look like. Now, my dear, sit here. Yes, yes, under this light here. Sit here and hold this little mirror in your hand, and presently when the lights go out you’ll see him appear. You’ll see him looking over your shoulder. Now hold the mirror steady. Abracadabra, who shall see? The face of the man who will marry me. Beatrice, Beatrice, you shall find, the face of the man who shall please your mind.’
A sudden shaft of light shot across the room from a step-ladder, placed behind a screen. It hit the right spot in the room, which was reflected in the mirror grasped in Beatrice’s excited hand.
‘Oh!’ cried Beatrice. ‘I’ve seen him. I’ve seen him! I can see him in my mirror!’
The beam was shut off, the lights came on and a coloured photograph pasted on a card floated down from the ceiling. Beatrice danced about excitedly.
‘That was him! That was him! I saw him,’ she cried.
‘Oh, he’s got a lovely ginger beard.’
She rushed to Mrs Oliver, who was the nearest person.
‘Do look, do look. Don’t you think he’s rather wonderful? He’s like Eddie Presweight, the pop singer. Don’t you think so?’
Mrs Oliver did think he looked like one of the faces she daily deplored having to see in her morning paper. The beard, she thought, had been an after-thought of genius.
‘Where do all these things come from?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Rowena gets Nicky to make them. And his friend Desmond helps. He experiments a good deal with photography. He and a couple of pals of his made themselves up, with a great deal of hair or side-burns or beards and things. And then with the light on him and everything, of course it sends the girls wild with delight.’
‘I can’t help thinking,’ said Ariadne Oliver, ‘that girls are really very silly nowadays.’
‘Don’t you think they always were?’ asked Rowena Drake.
Mrs Oliver considered.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she admitted.
‘Now then,’ cried Mrs Drake—‘supper.’
Supper went off well. Rich iced cakes, savouries, prawns, cheese and nut confections. The eleven-pluses stuffed themselves.
‘And now,’ said Rowena, ‘the last one for the evening. Snapdragon. Across there, through the pantry. That’s right. Now then. Prizes