The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [34]
Turning to Annie, Lady Gwendolyn beamed. “Smashing, my dear, absolutely smashing.” A sigh of pure pleasure. “I’ve always loved fêtes. I can’t wait to try the coconut shy, but I suppose it’s time for the performing seal to bark.”
“Do you mind?” Annie asked swiftly.
Lady Gwendolyn smoothed back the hair straggling from her braids. “Have you ever met a writer who didn’t enjoy meeting her readers?”
The diminutive author settled behind the table that had been placed in the gazebo and began to welcome her fans.
Confident that the official hostess was quite capable of handling her tasks, Annie sped from tent to stall to entertainment, making certain all was well. There were oceans of tea, a choice of elegant and light Earl Grey, delicately scented Jasmine Oolong, or classic Darjeeling. All served from china teapots. There had been a veritable deluge of impassioned suggestions when Annie had proposed silver. “Brackish. Not for true tea drinkers. Pottery at the very least, and, of course, preferably china.” As for the tea table, ah, what largesse: herbed cheese-custard tartlets, cheese straws, chicken-liver pâté rounds, caviar puffs, harlequin fingers, smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, piquant tuna sandwiches, crumpets, Chelsea buns, fruit scones, Shrewsbury biscuits, Cornish fairings, and classic shortbread. At the game booths, Annie made certain there were prizes enough. She had to replenish the Bob-in-Water prizes twice. As for the stalls, Annie was amused to spot Frank Saulter with a Madeira cake in one hand and a clutch of potholders in the other.
That was as close to the tea table as she was to come for quite a while. The last fan greeted, Lady Gwendolyn bounced briskly to her side. “Duty done. Is it cricket for me to play the games?”
It took Annie a moment to understand the request, then she burbled, “By all means, Lady Gwendolyn.”
For the next hour, Annie felt like a tail to a spirited kite as she followed Lady Gwendolyn from one entertainment to the next.
Lady Gwendolyn won three Kewpie dolls at hoopla, flinging the plate-size wooden hoops at the stakes with uncanny accuracy. She was unbeatable at skittles, whirling the ball attached by string to a center pole in a wicked circle to knock down the wooden pins. Her finest moment came, however, at the coconut shy. With the precision of Christie skewing social pretensions in The Secret of Chimneys, Lady Gwendolyn hurled the soft rubber ball, knocking over a coconut with each toss. By this time, Annie was carrying, in addition to the three Kewpie dolls, a red fire engine, a blue bead necklace, a Victorian dollhouse, a wooden hoop, and a sack full of pear drops.
Lady Gwendolyn adored the Bob-in-Water. She took an especial fancy to the packages wrapped in silver that bobbed in the water of the barrel, hauling out three in a row.
It was with a distinct sensation of relief that Annie held open the flap of the fortune teller’s tent for her feisty official hostess.
Carefully stowing her chief guest’s booty in Max’s care under a live oak, Annie escaped to the tea tent. She rejoined him with a full plate and a happy smile.
Max looked delicious in a blue cord suit and a white boater. She resisted the temptation to tell him how handsome he was. She was sure Laurel had already done the honors.
Max didn’t quite raise an eyebrow at her generous array of edibles.
“Hungry,” she retorted to the unspoken comment, then she concentrated on pure piggish pleasure.