The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [123]
So the transformed ballroom was as impressive and exciting to her as to the conference registrants. The ballroom was divided, by means of decorated screens, into fourths with an unusual difference. The bandstand was in the center of the ballroom, and the screens ran flush to the platform, so that each area was open to the music but self-contained with its decorations. Each square thus formed represented a particular kind of Christie mystery, the Country House, Travel, St. Mary Mead, and Adventure. It was cleverly done, the watercolor murals on the screens given substance by a few appropriate stage pieces: a fireplace complete with hearth rug and a country gentleman’s desk; luggage and a Model T Ford, an elegant mockup of a railroad dining-car table with fine china and a damask rose in a silver vase; a mud-spattered bicycle leaning against the painted fence in front of a cottage and tennis rackets propped carelessly against slatted wooden lawn chairs; a sealed oilskin packet and a crate filled with carved wooden animals from Africa.
By the time Annie and Max arrived, the ballroom was jammed, most of the three hundred costumed party-goers opting to display their cleverness in the appropriate arena. Annie and Max were running late because it had taken time to convince Ingrid that she no longer needed to guard all the flotsam turned in to Meeting Room D by the conference clue hunters.
Shouts were required to be heard over the excited din and the tea dance band music (heavy on Cole Porter, which vividly evoked the marvelous 1982 film version of Evil Under the Sun).
Annie and Max came as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, emulating the jaunty versions done so well on television by Francesca Annis and James Warwick. (Though, as all Christie readers know, Tommy is a redhead.) Max’s thick blond hair wasn’t appropriate either, but Annie was confident that otherwise Max was a quintessential Tommy, brave, stalwart, and forever admiring of Tuppence. As a couple, the Beresfords did not engage in mawkish shows of affection, “Good show, old bean,” was high praise. At the beginning of their collaboration in detecting, they’d scrambled for funds, Tuppence a parson’s daughter lately of the VAD (Volunteer Aid Detachment) and Tommy a newly discharged war hero without prospects. All they’d had (in common at that moment with Agatha and Archie Christie) was youth and love, but that, Annie thought, was the best the world could offer.
On one point, however, Annie had prevailed with the committee: Name tags identifying the character portrayed were required at the ball. That made encounters a great deal of fun. A bookseller from Denver was a marvelously effective Poirot, complete with black bowler, luxuriant black mustaches, and shiny black patent-leather shoes. A librarian from Downers Grove, Illinois, a feather duster tucked beneath the bow of her apron, was superb as the refreshing and unconventional Lucy Eyelesbarrow, who helps Miss Marple confound a murderer in What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!. A local bank vice president (whom Annie had always considered a bit of a stuff) revealed an unexpected capacity for playfulness. His name tag read EDWARD ROBINSON. As he tangoed past, his companion adorned with a magnificent (paste, no doubt) diamond necklace, Annie recalled the short story “The Manhood of Edward Robinson” and wondered what that indicated about the banker’s psyche.
Max looked at her anxiously. “Having fun?”
“Sure.” She tried to sound lighthearted.
“Annie, relax. Everybody else is.” But Max’s blue eyes were understanding. “You know Lady Gwendolyn would exhort us to keep a stiff upper lip. And there isn’t anything else we can do tonight. For her or Derek.”
Annie was still bemused at Posey