Lord Foxbridge Butts In

by Manners, Robert

  Twister arrived just as Pond came in with a tray of tea and sandwiches, and showed me the bottle of rotgut he would use to sweeten the belowstairs boys. I dismissed him with a wink that made him flinch again, but he took it like a man and departed.

  “Tea, Twi — Sergeant?” I asked courteously as he settled into an armchair and readied himself with pad and pencil.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking up and devastating me with a genuine smile, “Lemon, no sugar.”

  “Count?” I waved the pot at him, not sure if he was in the habit of taking tea, or if I should just put the brandy decanter at his elbow.

  “No, thank you, Sebastian,” he said, then turned to Twister, “Have those peasants finished ransacking my room?”

  “I think you’ll find it much as you left it, Count Gryzynsky,” he said almost kindly, but just a touch patronizingly, “Now if you don’t mind, I have a few questions to ask about your movements last night and early this morning.”

  “I wish to confess to lying when I was asked that same question earlier,” he said with great dignity, glancing over to me for support, “I was not in Brighton last night. I was in a hotel behind Charing Cross Station.”

  “Did you register in your own name? Did anyone see you arrive or leave?”

  “No, I did not check in. My companion had obtained the second room key earlier and gave it to me when we met for drinks. I do not know if anyone noticed me coming or going, I did not speak to anyone.”

  “And who was your companion?”

  Twister went on in this fashion, dragging the information out of the Count piece by reluctant piece, getting him to divulge the whole story on his night with Jimmy Horrocks (using verbs that made even me blush), as well as admitting the identity of the boy found hanging in his room. Twister was very good at interrogation, not registering shock or surprise as he continued his questions, moving through them at a leisurely pace as if he were reading them off a script. It was very soothing, and the Count relaxed so much that he was answering without any back-talk or sarcasm by the time Twister finished.

  “Thank you, Count Gryzynsky,” he ended the interview by folding his notebook up and leaning back to sip his tea, “Your candour is very much appreciated. I must tell you, though, your position is very serious. Mr. Horrocks has categorically denied knowing you, and we knew you were lying about Brighton with one phone call to the station-master. Then again, you weren’t seen here, either. But then neither was the victim, Pavel... what is it? Strigoyoff?”

  “Strokhoyev,” the Count corrected mildly.

  “That reminds me, Andrzej,” I inserted myself into the conversation, “You never told me, was there another dancer competing for that position in the Belgravia Ballet?”

  “Yes, there was,” the Count thought about it for a moment, “Well, of course, there were many candidates auditioning that day, but only three of us were seriously considered. Myself and Pavel, and a Frenchman named Jacques de Vienne, which I don’t think is his real name. We have been friends in the past, but he has not spoken to me since the audition. He was very angry that he wasn’t chosen. But he was clearly a lesser dancer than Pavel, and I think he did not approach my level, even. He was very good, but his audition piece was ill-chosen, and he is just a bit heavy on his feet. You could hear him hit the boards at the grand jeté.”

  “As I thought. Twis... I mean, Sergeant Paget, I think it would be worth your while to have a chat with Jacques de Vienne.”

  “Why on Earth?” he goggled at me.

  “Andrzej, does Horrocks represent Jacques?” that novel’s plot had reasserted itself and was looking more and more promising with the advent of a third candidate: the classic dramatic triangle.

  “Yes, he represents many dancers. Ballet and chorus are his specialty.”

  “But he doesn’t represent you?” Twister wondered.

  “I did not think I needed an agent. I thought my name would speak for itself, my fame in the Ballets Russes.”

  “Now think about this,” I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees as if I were discussing a cricket strategy, “What if Horrocks was an accomplice? He lures the Count out of the Hyacinth with a promise of an engagement, leaving the room here vacant. Then Jacques lures Pavel here under some pretense, and kills him in the Count’s room, in order to implicate him in the boy’s murder. That way Pavel is dead, Andrzej is in prison, and Jacques de Vienne steps into the primo uomo’s slippers.”

  Both of them blinked at me in surprise, or perhaps disbelief.

  “Give me those names again?” Twister pulled out his pad and pencil to make a note, which filled me with glee. He was taking me seriously!

  “But,” I spotted the flaw in my own structure, “why in the world would he make it look like suicide?”

  “It did not look like suicide, after about ten minutes’ proper investigation,” Twister said, flipping back a few pages in his book, “Once we got the rope off, we could clearly see he’d been strangled with something else and then strung up after he was dead. There were scuff marks on the end of the bed, which show that someone kicked furiously at the footboard wearing black shoes; the victim’s toes were bruised, but the shoes were not on the body, which was a yard away from the bed. It was all a set-up.”

  “Could you tell if Pavel had been, er, interfered with before he died?” I wondered. What inducement would bring the boy to the Hyacinth late at night?

  “No, not that we could tell. The post-mortem will make sure, but he seemed to be in one piece except for the ligature marks. Some sort of twisted cord, probably silk.”

  “Like a dressing-gown belt?” I thought it seemed the likeliest weapon to find in a stranger’s bedroom.

  “Probably, but we didn’t find any such cord in the room.”

  “I do not own any dressing-gown,” the Count boasted, “Silly to put on clothes in one’s own room.”

  “He must’ve brought it with him,” I thought, “I just can’t think why he would, when a necktie or scarf from the Count’s own wardrobe would be much more damning.”

  “Stagecraft,” the Count gave us another one of his shrugs, one that told us he was dismayed at having to point out the obvious, “This was a crime carried out by a performing artist.”

  “I think I agree with you,” Twister sounded like he didn’t like agreeing with anyone, “It has a very stagey feel to it. There is something suggestive in a dressing-gown belt that seems rather more unseemly than a necktie, especially in conjunction with the night-shirt, indicating a sort of intimacy or depravity. It just looks nasty, somehow. But why? There’s no point to making it look like a suicide in the first place.”

  “Actually, I think there may be,” I was looking at the window, which I had not closed nor covered in my consternation over hearing the Chief Inspector call me a gormless kid, and suddenly visualized the way the Count climbed across the courtyard like a monkey, “Have you made a habit of climbing the balconies in the courtyard, Andrzej? You’re very good at it. Seeing you do it is what gave me the idea to climb into your room from the gallery.”

  “I do it all the time,” the Count smiled and lifted his head proudly, “I do it everywhere I go. It is the most wonderful exercise to climb buildings, it improves the balance and the tone better than any similar activities in a gymnasium.”

  “And did Jacques know about this hobby of yours?” I pursued.

  “Of course,” the Count looked perplexed, “Everyone knows. Well, everyone with whom I’ve worked, or shared rooms.”

  “There!” I crowed triumphantly, “He knew that if Andrzej had killed someone in his room, he could make it look like a suicide, and turn it into a locked-room mystery, by barricading the door and then climbing out of the room by the window. You can latch a window from the outside with a bit of string or wire looped around the handle, but you wouldn’t be able to bolt it; when I got there, the window was latched but not bolted. And it would implicate Andrzej immediately once it was known that he was able to climb around the courtya
rd with ease. There’s a winter-garden down below us, he could have been seen by anybody. Only a matter of time before one of the staff spilled that tidbit to the police.”

  Right on cue, Pond stepped into the room and cleared his throat respectfully.

  “Pond!” I cried out, “Come in, have a seat, tell us all you learned.”

  “I should prefer to stand, my lord,” he came into the room and stood like a soldier behind an armchair, the one Twister wasn’t sitting in.

  “Well, out with it. What and who was seen?”

  “Well, my lord, I discovered from the night porter that he was not entirely forthcoming when questioned by the police. I was shocked to hear it, my lord,” this was obviously for Twister’s benefit, “but I pretended sympathy and he confided in me. The young Russian gentleman arrived here just after midnight and asked for Count Gryzynsky. The porter phoned the Count’s room and was told to send the visitor up. He did not like to tell the police that, for fear of causing trouble for the Count.”

  “That is pretty damning,” Twister admitted.

  “However, sir,” Pond addressed himself to the policeman, “I also learned from the head bellboy that Count Gryzynsky had been seen to go out in the early afternoon and had not been seen since. The Count is a great favorite with the bellboys, sir, they call him a ‘dreamboat,’ begging your pardon. They always know when he is in and when he is not. Apparently they are accustomed to watching his exercises from the winter-garden of a morning.”

  “Golly,” I gasped, “Perhaps you should start drawing your curtains, Andrzej.”

  “What for?” he asked in all innocence. He was a performer, of course he’d want an audience.

  “Anything else, Pond?” I prompted.

  “Yes, my lord. A stranger was noticed in the kitchen in the late evening. He said he was Captain Cathcart’s new valet, when greeted by the chef’s assistant. But the kitchen-boy had a good look at him and thought that he was ‘mutton dressed as lamb,’ my lord. His hair appeared to be false and he was wearing a makeup darker than his natural skin, his hands were too pale. When I asked the chef’s assistant and the kitchen-boy what the man looked like, the description corresponded superficially to the Count’s appearance. And of course the Captain does not have a valet, he has a batman, who is still in residence — though perhaps the kitchen staff might not be as aware of this as the upstairs staff.”

  “My God,” Twister was plainly flabbergasted that my one valet had got more information in an hour than his four constables had gotten all afternoon. I was as proud as a papa whose son just bowled a century at Lord’s.

  “It all falls together,” I made a little show of a summing-up, as fictional detectives were wont to do, standing up to strut a bit in front of the fireplace, “Jacques makes his agent get Andrzej out of the hotel. I see you’re about to ask for motive, Sergeant, since an agent’s commission off a dancer’s salary is not much inducement; but I suspect that their relationship is more intimate than usual; and that spending a night with the Count can be viewed as it’s own inducement.”

  “Thank you, Sebastian,” the Count was touched by the tribute, but Twister narrowed his eyes angrily at me.

  “Once Andrzej is out of the way, Jacques contacts Pavel, pretending to be the Count, probably by note unless he is a particularly talented mimic. He invites Pavel for a drink or a tryst, who knows? Maybe he sweetens the offer with an introduction to Diaghilev, or a signed photograph of Baranova, or I don’t know what. He insinuates himself into the hotel through the staff entrance, having made himself up to look like the Count in hopes that someone would see him and mistake him for the Count.

  “Using the same climbing trick that Andrzej uses, and which even I was able to manage, he gets into the Count’s room and waits. The night porter calls, he answers and tells him to send the boy up; anybody could fake a Polish accent over three words. He gets out his dressing-gown belt, and prepares to kill. Perhaps he has some dialog with the boy, perhaps he leaps on him from behind, but he loops the cord around his neck and strangles him, while poor Pavel vainly kicks at the furniture, leaving marks. Jacques then strips the boy to his shirt, or dresses him in a shirt he brought for the purpose, folding the boy’s clothes neatly and setting up the locked-room scenario. He sneaks out of the hotel somehow without being seen, or being seen by someone Pond wasn’t able to question, and goes on home. The rest we know.”

  “Very lucid presentation,” Twister admitted, though he was clearly annoyed by my posturing as a Great Detective, “I will get onto de Vienne and Horrocks and see if I can shake some information out of them. Thank you very much for your assistance, Mr. Pond.”

  “I hope it was not too great a liberty, sir,” he bowed, allowing a gratified smirk to flit across his mouth before he came up.

  “It was, but I won’t argue with results. Well, I will bid you gentlemen good night, and be about my business.”

  “You don’t really mind me butting in, do you Twister?” I asked him as I walked him out.

  “The results speak for themselves,” he shook his head, “So I shouldn’t mind. But I do, somehow. You’re more intimate with that Count than you said, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Do you mind that?”

  “I do, but you’re a free man, I don’t see why I should mind you going with whomever you wish.”

  “Because you like me, of course,” I reasoned.

  “You’re nothing but trouble,” he sighed as we walked down the main stairs together.

  “I’m nothing but a ginger tart, according to at least one prefect,” I laughed at him, “As well as a gormless kid, according to your Chief. But what, may I ask, is a ‘toffee-nosed nob’? I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “Were you listening at the keyhole?”

  “I didn’t have to. I heard you quite clearly across the courtyard without even trying.”

  “Well, I apologize. But a toffee-nosed nob is what you are. ‘Nob’ is short for ‘noble’; I don’t know what ‘toffee-nosed’ means, exactly, but it’s an extension of ‘toff’ and only applied to the aristocracy.”

  “Well, then I shan’t be offended,” I laughed, and wanted so badly to kiss him just then that I actually reached out to touch him, but checked myself in time and turned it into a handshake, “You will tell me how things turn out with de Vienne and Horrocks, won’t you?”

  “I really shouldn’t,” he said, “But I will. You deserve to know. And if it turns out you solved the whole thing without leaving your hotel, I’ll give you dinner; but if it turns out this is all moonshine and I end up looking a priceless ass in front of my Chief, I will break you into five pieces and stomp on the remains in hobnailed boots.”

  “You really know how to talk to a girl, don’t you?” I batted my eyelashes at him comically.

  “Go upstairs and dress for dinner like a good little nob and let me get back to my work. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  When I returned to my rooms, the Count had gone, but not back to his own room; he’d gone to the manager to demand a different room, and was busily being installed in the larger room next door to his own — I could see him across the courtyard as if he were on stage.

  Pond was still there, though, standing in the middle of the bedroom, glaring balefully at an apricot silk shirt that he held delicately at arm’s length as if afraid it would bite him. He tried to wipe the disgust off his face when he realized I was in the room, but he didn’t quite succeed.

  “Something amiss, Pond?” I put my hands in my pockets and braced for a fight.

  “Where did your lordship purchase these shirts?” he asked in a strangled sort of voice.

  “A place in Savile Row, a few doors from Poole’s, I forget the name. Wasn’t it on the wrapping paper?”

  “No, my lord, it was not.”

  “Do you want me to return them?” I cocked my head at him like a spaniel waiting for him to throw a ball; I knew there were deep anti-silk passions roiling about inside him, and I
wanted to goad him into an explosion.

  “It is not my place to say, my lord,” he sounded faintly hopeful that I would take that as a hint.

  “Awfully pretty, isn’t it?” I took the shirt from him and went over to the cheval glass, holding it up under my chin to see how it looked on me. The apricot color really brought out the golden highlights in my hair and eyes.

  “It might appear slightly effeminate to your lordship’s friends,” he managed to grind out. He wanted so badly to yell at me.

  “Go on and say it,” I smiled encouragingly at him.

  “My lord?”

  “Say what’s on your mind.

  “It is not my place...”

  “That’s an order,” I snapped.

  “Well, all right!” he finally shouted, his whole face animated with his personality, his hands waving about, “Are you trying to look like a poncing fairy? These abominations look like they came from a dress shop. I can’t believe you’d be such a goop as to buy twenty-four of them. What did the salesman tell you? That the Prince of Wales wears them? They all say that about whatever piece of trash they’re trying to push this week.”

  “I told you you should have come shopping with me,” I grinned in delight.

  “Oh, trust me, Foxy m’lad, I’m not letting you out alone again, after this.”

  “Oh, super!” I clapped my hands like a child getting a treat, “I want you to talk to me like this all the time.”

  “That would be extremely inappropriate, my lord,” he tried to shake himself back together and sounded more like his valet-self, but a little warmer, “I am very ashamed of this outburst.”

  “Don’t be, Pond. I like it, and I want you to always be honest with me. You can be as formal as you like, but don’t hold back your feelings, and never think I don’t want to hear what’s on your mind. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, my lord,” he bowed a little wearily, “I will endeavor to follow your lordship’s wishes.”

  “Good! Now, return these shirts and the handkerchiefs tomorrow morning and order the right kind for me. But let me keep this apricot one, I love it like a brother.”