Shirley, who thanks to her acquaintance with Rollo moved in more exalted circles than the rest of the Cokers, reported that she had been to another party last week in Piccadilly where the Prince of Wales had begun the evening as Bonnie Prince Charlie before donning the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan and then ending as a Chinese coolie. Three blind mice, a pair of white ostriches, Lord Blandford as a female Channel swimmer, Lord Berne as a “monkey bride,” complete with veil, Winston Churchill as Nero. “Decadence piled upon decadence,” Shirley said gleefully. “Oh, and, of course,” she added, “your friend Vivian Quinn was there.”
“Not my friend,” Ramsay muttered.
* * *
—
Everyone at the Baby Party appeared to be already very drunk when Ramsay arrived. Liquor was being served in nursery mugs and the “bar” was a baby’s playpen. A cocktail had supposedly been designed especially for the occasion by the barman at the Ritz. It was called Mother’s Milk—crème de cacao, gin, sugar and cream—and just the name of it made Ramsay feel squeamish, certainly when applied to his own mother—although, in fact, only Niven had gulped at Nellie’s breast, the rest of them had had to survive as best they could on Cow and Gate and Nestlé’s formula, Nellie having decided that she was hampered enough in life without having a child more or less permanently attached to her like an oyster to a rock.
Despite the name, the drink slid easily down Ramsay’s throat without giving much of a clue as to its alcoholic content. The nursery mugs were small and he had already quaffed the contents of Little Miss Muffet and Old Mother Hubbard and was clinging onto Baa Baa Black Sheep as if it were a life raft. So far, he had—thank God—successfully managed to avoid encountering Pamela Berowne, the hostess of the party.
How his brother would abhor this lunacy, Ramsay thought, as a vigorous game of Catch started around him. Ramsay envied Niven his certainty—he had Passchendaele at his back to give credence to his simmering outrage, whereas Ramsay had only a Swiss sanatorium and a burning desire to be acknowledged on a wider stage. Or any stage at all.
He sought refuge in a reclusive corner of privet to make notes. He carried a notebook everywhere with him now, although he was currently far too drunk to write anything coherent and his jottings consisted mostly of repeatedly writing the word “IDIOTS!” in capital letters. A passing waiter with a tray found him and, with an impassive face, asked, “More Mother’s Milk, sir?” Ramsay lifted a Jack and Jill mug off the tray. How would he engineer a murder here?, he wondered. A fictional murder, but nonetheless you had to sort of act it out in your head, didn’t you? A strangling in the shrubbery, a bomb that detonated on a hopscotch square? Poison in the Mother’s Milk was the easiest one, he supposed.
Poison was easy to get hold of, you just went to the chemist or the ironmonger and said you had rats. There was an ironmongery next door to the Amethyst, part of the complex secret escape route, and he resolved to purchase some poison tomorrow. Strychnine, he imagined. Or arsenic. Cyanide, perhaps. They were all attractive words. He was intrigued to know what it would feel like to buy what was, to all intents and purposes, a murder weapon. Would he feel a twinge of guilt? But it would be quite legitimate—after all, they did have rats and they couldn’t just expect Phyllis to keep on bludgeoning them to death all the time, although she had seemed to enjoy it in a way that had slightly unnerved Ramsay.
It dawned rather slowly on Ramsay how drunk he was, having by now imbibed almost the entire Mother Goose oeuvre as well as consuming the five-shilling packet of dope that he had armoured himself with before coming here. Nor was he any longer safe in the privet, as people with stupid names like Bunny, Bingo, Pingo and Pongo suddenly descended on him, mistaking him for a participant in their hide-and-seek game. They dragged him out into the open and it took a short yet vigorous bout of fisticuffs to escape them. Ramsay wasn’t as good a scrapper as Niven, but he had spent time in the ring at Fettes, not always defeated, and, coached by Niven, was not afraid to face his enemies if there was no alternative.
As the evening dragged on, the place increasingly resembled Bedlam. It was when Ramsay found himself assisting the under-butler of the “great house” with the task of ejecting a reluctant donkey from the library （no mean feat） that he decided he couldn’t cope with the burlesque any more. He was about to call it a night when he caught sight of the enemy approaching—a two-pronged attack, with Pamela Berowne galloping towards him on his left flank and Vivian Quinn cruising towards him at a more leisurely pace on his right, the usual self-satisfied smirk on his face. Quinn, Ramsay noticed, was caparisoned in the costume of a Spanish matador.