Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) Read Online Free PDF Page A

attention, a riot of rich red. Ten men—Tom counted as the camera quickly panned—were standing along the fuselage in a line, arms behind one another’s hips like a row of chorus girls, mouths stretched in cheeky grins. Tom laughed, enjoying the echo of laughter elsewhere in the crowd. The men’s jumpsuits were identical, the crimsonof coronation robes, while the parachute straps crossing their chests were white with rows of black dots, like the very robes’ traditional ermine trim. Puzzling was the gold-and-red confection at the top of each helmet.
    “What—?” Tom began but Jane anticipated him:
    “Coronets.”
    Tom laughed louder. “They really are good sports.”
    “They really are quite silly.” Marguerite had reinserted herself into their company along with the red setter. “But good sports, too, I agree. Lucy and Dominic will be staying over, by the way,” she said, addressing Jane. “I asked Mrs. Gaunt to prepare rooms for them. And Tom, you’ll be in the Opium Bedroom, on the ground floor. No stairs. And your daughter on the nursery floor, with Max. Smile, Hector, darling.” She turned to the screen as others gathered around to watch.
    “Olly looks peeved, too,” Jane remarked as the camera moved down the line to decorous clapping on the ground, a caption appearing under each man with his name and title.
    It was obvious the cameraman was chivvying the two into better humour, for as the camera pulled back HECTOR, EARL OF FAIRHAVEN (said the caption), allowed a tight smile to crease his face behind his visor, though the smile didn’t lift to his eyes. Similarly, OLIVER, MARQUESS OF MORBORNE , let a short, sharp smirk shift his cheeks for the grace of a second.
    “Ah, Jamie
is
a camera.” Jane read out her husband’s name and title: “James, Viscount Kirkbride. There it is, strapped to his forehead.” The picture on the screen dissolved unexpectedly into a view of a tall man in ordinary dress holding a camera and waving before taking an extravagant bow. The caption read DENNIS PAPNORTH, COMMON AS MUCK . “See,” Jane said,as laughter again rippled across the lawn, “Jamie is filming
him
.”
    “Smoothly done, the transition from one camera to another,” Tom remarked. “How—?”
    “There’s a little man set up in the library with some sort of magical electronic board,” Marguerite answered as the lords offered a collective thumbs-up and broke muster, heading for the airplane’s open door. “They’re off.”
    Jamie leapt first. The view on the big screen switched from a hazy impression of Devon’s chessboard landscape and a startling shot of the earth’s very roundedness to a smear of feathery white. Ice blue lasted for a moment, followed in quick succession by flashes of wispy cloud, the underside of the airplane, and finally a jumble of nine men tumbling from the airplane’s great maw, each speeding like a crimson bullet towards Jamie’s camera. The effect was so vivid, viewers on lawn and terrace—Tom included—gasped and instinctively leaned away. The raucous beat of some rock music replaced the Haydn as—the camera view was from the airplane now—the lords began a kind of aerial ballet, twisting and turning in swift choreographed sequences, grasping and ungrasping one another’s limbs to form ever-changing patterns. Rather like watching the formation of giant red snowflakes, Tom decided, as the mesmerising configurations changed again and again. In a quarter at the top of the TV screen, the Jamie-cam view offered a more abstract version of the same sequences, arms and legs and concentrated faces behind plastic visors gliding past as if the troposphere were a lovely place for a swim. Tom was about to voice his wonder at their skill and professionalism when the airplane camera caught a certain wonkiness inthe smooth and pleasing patterning. At first he thought the skydivers were all about to break off—they had less than a minute for their free-fall display—and deploy