Heil Harris!

home.
    Except that she was staying the weekend. She glanced furtively about and then headed for the stairs.
    “Darling,” called Cynthia, “you can’t go to bed yet. We’ve been hearing the most tantalising screams from the library. Somebody’s being raped!”
    “Stand back!” called Lord Throgmorton. He had a key to the library and the crowd made a passage for him to get at the door. Emma waited. She might as well see everything.
    Lord Throgmorton threw the door open with a flourish and then stepped back in horror. “My God!” he barked. “What the devil is the fellow doing up there?” A few women screamed and someone laughed before the general buzz of amazement and disgust began. Then the crowd was pushing forward into the library.
    “I say, Emma, come and see what they’ve done to David,” cried Cynthia.
    He was hanging from the chandelier by his wrists. He was still alive, but naked from the waist down, and tied to his groin was a card declaring, “A yid is a yid is a yid.” His shirt tails were hitched up into his mouth to form a gag.
    “Well,” said Lucrezia Borgia, “did you ever see anything like that?”
    Batman was outraged. “Who’s he trying to impress?” But Lord Throgmorton quickly took command. He wasn’t the type to do nothing. “All young ladies under the age of seventeen,” he called, “back into the stateroom.” Then he turned irritably to his wife. “Don’t stand there staring, Millie. Get the young people out of here.”
    While the Bronte sisters next to her were discussing Jewish hygiene Emma fetched a chair and climbed up to release the poor man. He was shivering with embarrassment and obviously terrified of the scandal. Emma cut the handkerchief at his wrists and he fell to the floor.
    “The bastards,” he moaned, “the bloody bastards.” Then he stumbled to his feet and pushed through the crowd. “The bastards!”
    Emma picked up the card from the floor. David Simmons wouldn’t need it now. She put it in one of her flared pockets and went upstairs to bed.
     

"Someone murdered Freddie”
     
    Cynthia Throgmorton came up to bed at three o’clock. The party had long been over but the guests were slow to depart. Emma heard her pause outside her door. A gentle tap. “Emma. Are you awake.?” So it would be another hour before they had any sleep. The old habits of a girls’ boarding school die hard. All that brushing of hair and drinking cocoa, the exchange of experiences. She only hoped that Cynthia wouldn’t come into the bed.
    “Sorry it’s so late,” she whispered as she closed the door. “Freddie always insists on making love to me before he’ll go home. And tonight he was so drunk it took him forty-three minutes.”
    Emma glanced automatically at her watch. “I thought you were marrying Albert.”
    “Only for breeding purposes. He’ll be the earl when his father dies. What did you think of Freddie?”
    “An asset to any woman.”
    “He’s a bore when he’s drunk. I think I’ll pass him on when the season gets going.” She kicked off her dancing shoes and sat on the side of the bed. “It was Freddie who played that trick on poor David. The clot! I mean, he isn’t anti-semitic or anything. He simply thought it was a great jape to play on someone. Can I come in with you?”
    “All right.” Cynthia was twenty-seven and a big girl now. Very big. If she’d needed the money she could have earned her living as a professional wrestler. But her long golden hair was as beautiful as it had been ten years ago when Emma had envied the natural waves and the girl’s voluptuous figure. She noted cattily that Cynthia still had a face like a French poodle. “I suppose Freddie is a Werewolf.”
    “Yes. Speaking of which…” She collapsed into a fit of giggling that made the bed squeak. “The Werewolf. I nearly burst! What were you doing with Bertie down in the garden?”
    Emma shrugged. “Knocking him about a little.”
    “Lucky for Bertie. He used to get me on that a few years ago, but I soon grew bored with it. He’s such a Wet. I mean, when it comes to conversation he never says anything. Talks about all those old films with Boris Karloff. God help the country when he gets into parliament. Do you like my scent?”
    “Very nice. Tell me about the Werewolves — ”
    “Oh hell,” groaned Cynthia, “it’s all that boy scout balls about being British and proving your virility. I only know one way for a man to prove his virility. It was a