Lord Foxbridge Butts In

by Manners, Robert

  “Yes, but unfortunately it’s not so much an avenue as a railway junction. The estate agents are numerous and there’s a high turnover, it’s one of those massive agencies where they treat it like a sales job. Bright young men coming and going all the time, none of them knowing a thing about the buildings they’re renting or the people they’re renting them to, or even who owns them. The secretary, Miss Murchison, who’s the only person in that madhouse who knows anything about the place, says that there are no keys missing — but that it would be very easy for any agent, past or present, to check one out and have a copy cut before returning it. It’ll be like emptying the Thames with a teaspoon to follow up on all the possible people who’ve had hold of that particular office’s key. But we have people working on it.”

  “Seven maids with seven mops, to sweep for half a year?” I joked, “Or seven cops with seven teaspoons?”

  “To bail from now to Doomsday,” he shook his head grimly, “But we’ll start looking for any Czechs named Georg or Johan as we go through.”

  “You’re welcome,” I inclined my head grandly, “But wait a minute, I keep forgetting there was a body. He must be either Georg or Johan. It should be easy to find his brother.”

  “How did you forget there was a body, when you’re the one who found it?” he goggled at me in disbelief.

  “I was so preoccupied by the translation,” I offered as a fairly lame excuse, “And I was avoiding mentioning it to ffinchWinship and Beran.”

  “But you did eventually mention it?” he parsed my choice of words with uncanny precision.

  “I had to, eventually, but only in passing. After I mentioned you and Scotland Yard, they got a little shirty with me, so I had to give them the rest of the story.”

  “Why would I or the Yard make them shirty?” he wondered.

  “Well, I did sort of trick them into doing your job for you,” I suggested, “And with the Slavic element, I may have ruffled some communist sympathies.”

  “Hmm,” he didn’t seem convinced by the explanation, “Be that as it may, the forgotten body is indeed forgettable. The man had nothing on him, his pockets were completely empty, not so much as a bus-ticket to give us a clue who he was. Most of his clothes were ready-made from large British retailers; in the garments that might have been traceable, the labels had been forcibly removed. Whoever killed him went over him with a fine-toothed comb to make sure we wouldn’t be able to identify him easily.”

  “Which argues a certain facility or custom to killing,” I considered that facet, “Or just a very quick mind.”

  “I am assuming the killer is a professional, it was so neatly done. To turn a man’s head around like that takes a lot of skill, you can’t just walk up to a bloke and break his neck for him. You have to be quick as a mongoose to do it before the other chap thinks to defend himself, or even to tense his neck muscles.”

  “But do professional killers have squabbles about paltry inheritances and then bump off their own brothers?”

  “If we’re assuming that the dead bloke is one of the two men you heard talking,” Twister craned his head around to look at me, as my perambulations had taken me behind his chair, “Then I wouldn’t think so. However, if the two brothers were there to kill a third bloke, and got to bickering once they’d done it, the setup makes more sense.”

  “Oh, but that’s terribly clever!” I enthused, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because you have a brilliant but woefully undisciplined mind, Foxy,” Twister turned back around and reached for the teapot, “You got it into your nut that two men went in and one went out, and that the conversation was the cause of the murder; and so you didn’t think of any other options while you were haring off after linguists at the Oxford & Cambridge.”

  “You sound like my schoolmaster,” I drawled to hide the little thrill I’d felt when he said I was brilliant, storing away the compliment for later delectation, “‘Bright but lacks discipline,’ my reports home always said.”

  “And Oxford apparently didn’t discipline you enough,” he shrugged, “That’s what makes you a dilettante instead of a professional.”

  “I thought it was my inherent laziness,” I perched on the arm of his chair and reached across him to grab a fresh lemon slice for his tea, “Or that I’m too young and pretty to be taken seriously.”

  “You aren’t lazy by any means,” he said, and he was so close I felt his breath through my shirt-sleeve, “You showed a lot of energy and application in hunting out that office and getting your translation done. And you are terribly persistent about trying to seduce me.”

  “Trying?” I looked down at him, smouldering for all I was worth, “If I was trying, I would have done it by now.”

  “Says you,” he laughed, pushing me gently but firmly away so that I had to leap to my feet or fall on my backside.

  “Says me,” I promised him.

  “Well,” he stood up decisively and picked up his hat, “I’d better get back to the office and see what they’ve found out while I’ve been sitting here sipping your tea.”

  “Don’t forget your copy of my notes,” I went over to the desk to get the envelope I’d set aside for him. He didn’t really need them, since I’d already got them translated; but it had been a bit of a sweat writing it all out twice, and I didn’t want my work to go to waste.

  “Thanks, Foxy,” he shook my hand warmly when I handed over the envelope, “I really do appreciate your efforts on the Yard’s behalf, even if they were indiscreetly done, and merely to satisfy your own pathological curiosity.”

  “The things you say, Sergeant,” I made a camp curtsey, “Like to turn a girl’s head.”

  He laughed rather louder than the joke deserved and went off on his way, leaving me with quite a lot on my mind.

  I realized, rather too late, that I’d started getting dressed too early. I had nothing really to do between Twister’s departure and when I could reasonably go downstairs, and I didn’t want to crease my trousers or rumple my shirt, nor did I want to change clothes to go out and then come back and change again. Eventually I just arranged myself carefully on the sofa so as to not muss my clothes, and dove into a book — one of Mrs. Christie’s masterpieces, to bring my frames of reference back up to a higher standard than the pulps.

  When my little mantel-clock struck seven, I got up and went into my bedroom to finish dressing, vaguely wondering where Pond had got to, but sure that I still remembered how to link my own cuffs; however, I didn’t even get the wardrobe door opened before Pond materialized beside me.

  “How do you do that?” I asked him, partly fascinated and partly annoyed.

  “How do I do what, my lord?” he gently pushed me away from the wardrobe and in front of the cheval glass so he could work on me.

  “How do you pop up out of a trap right when I’m about to need you?” I expanded the question.

  “I’m an experienced servant, my lord,” he explained, sliding my waistcoat over my shoulders, “I’ve been in service since the age of twelve, beginning as page in the house where my father was butler. One develops a sort of sixth sense. Just as a doctor can diagnose an ailment by looking at his patient, a servant can diagnose a need in his employer without effort.”

  “I wonder if it’s noises?” I accepted the explanation but was not entirely satisfied, “If you heard me open the wardrobe door, too quiet to notice consciously but just loud enough to trigger a subconscious response? Or you hear me moving around in bed, or a change in my breathing, and know I’m waking up and it’s time to bring coffee?”

  “That may be, my lord,” he stepped in front of me to drape my watch-chain from the button to the pocket, “I have never analyzed myself in that light.”

  “If I ever meet one of those psychologist johnnies, I’ll be sure to bring him around to study you.”

  “I’m sure your lordship will meet a psychologist sooner or later,” he smiled a little, looking up to tie up my tie.

  “Hopefully in a
social situation,” I laughed, “rather than being thrown in a looney bin.”

  Pond didn’t answer that one, and just went about dressing me, meticulously arranging each little piece of wardrobe on my person. I have mentioned before how restful it could be to have Pond in the room; having him dress me had become one of those soothing rituals, like trooping to chapel for morning prayers at school, that I sometimes chafed at but always eventually enjoyed.

  It was getting on for eight when Pond performed his final brushing of my shoulders and stepped back, pronouncing me complete with a satisfied nod. I thanked him, as I always did, went and snapped a white carnation off the arrangement in the sitting-room, and stuck it in my buttonhole as I made my way down the stairs. I was starting to feel oddly nervous, not quite sure where I should wait, thinking about different things I might say when Miles arrived, whether I should begin my tour on the first floor or the ground floor. It was odd for me to feel so fluttery before having dinner with a chap I fancied, but for some reason I was as twitchy as a bridegroom in a chapel vestry waiting for the bride to turn up.

  When Miles arrived, finding me wandering aimlessly at the bottom of the stairs, he looked just exactly as delicious in white tie as I’d thought he would — there was no question of going to a show later: as soon as I caught sight of him, my only aim was to get through dinner and get him up to my rooms. And if he demurred, I would just have to bean him with a champagne bottle and have him carted up in the luggage lift.

  After showing him around the public rooms of the hotel, having a drink in the lounge, and then going down to dinner, I felt pretty sure I wasn’t going to have to resort to abduction to have my way with the good professor: in the more liberal atmosphere of Hyacinth House, he was able to give much freer reign to his flirting than he could at the Oxford & Cambridge, and he proved himself to be quite an expert — no, a virtuoso.

  He started slowly, with a rather demure coquetry, and worked his way up to faintly suggestive banter reinforced with the sort of smouldering gazes that are Mr. Valentino’s specialty; by the time we got to the dessert course, he was being playfully affectionate, nudging my feet under the table and toying with my fingers.

  We took our coffee and brandy in the billiards room, where he taught me a very interesting variation of snooker, played in tandem instead of turns, with him pressed against my back to help me line up the shots. By the time we finished that, I was so hotted up that I almost threw him down on the snooker table to go at it right there; but there were other gentlemen in the room, and that would have been too unseemly, even for the Hyacinth.

  When we got back to my rooms, Pond was thankfully absent, and we started in on each other immediately on closing the door, having our first round on the floor behind the sofa with most of our clothes still on, then moving to the bedroom for more measured and thorough exercises. Miles was an absolute delight, masterful and considerate at once, and I hope I gave as good as I got; when we could do no more, he curled himself around me like a warm coat and we drifted off into blissful slumber.

  I woke sometime late in the night, though, surprised to discover him gone. I sat up and turned on the light, seeing that the few clothes he’d still had on when we made it to the bedroom were gone; but he couldn’t have been gone long, the sheets where he’d lain were still warm. He didn’t seem like the sort to go off in the night without saying good-bye, so I became a little worried for him — I hoped he wasn’t ill or anything.

  Sliding into my dressing-gown, I checked and saw he wasn’t in the bathroom; but while there, I heard a faint sound coming from the sitting-room. However, when I turned off the bathroom light, I noticed that no light came from under the sitting-room door: if he was out there, he was moving around in the dark. Thinking that perhaps he was wandering around trying to find a light, I opened the door and snapped the switch nearest the sill.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” he looked up sadly from what he was doing, which appeared to be ransacking my desk.

  “What are you doing?” I wondered, “You’re not ill, I hope.”

  “No, I’m not ill,” he resumed his careful but thorough search of my desk as if I wasn’t there.

  “Can I help you find something?” I was so confused by this interchange, I began to wonder if I was actually dreaming it. One doesn’t get up in the middle of the night to find a recent bedmate fully dressed and going through one’s desk; it had an Alice-in-Wonderland absurdity to it that made me doubt its reality.

  “Your original transcript of the conversation you heard in your cupboard this morning.”

  “It’s in the padded morocco portfolio in the bottom right drawer,” I said, cocking my head at him. I had to be dreaming this.

  “Thank you,” he went to the correct drawer and pulled out the portfolio, a sort of lap-desk that I used to keep my correspondence neat, “I managed to pocket the paper you brought to the club before handing over my translation, but then discovered that it was a copy. I need the original.”

  “What for?” I sat down in my favorite armchair and lit a cigarette, waiting for the narrative of this odd dream to take shape.

  “I’d rather not tell you,” he turned to the fireplace and placed my pages in the grate, then applied his cigarette-lighter to them, watching closely as they burned to ash, and scattering the ashes about on the hearth.

  “You didn’t want me to find out that your translation was incorrect?” I hazarded a guess.

  “No, I didn’t. How did you find out?” he eyed me suspiciously.

  “I didn’t, I just now guessed. It was the only reason I could think of.”

  “And I just gave myself away, didn’t I,” he shook his head ruefully, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the mantel.

  “You shouldn't be concerned over some mistakes in a translation, any fault would most likely be my own,” I said comfortingly, then realized that it wouldn’t be a mistake he’d go to such lengths to cover up, but rather a falsehood: “You translated it incorrectly on purpose? Why?”

  “Again, I’d rather not say.”

  “Did you know who the speaker was?” I pursued the question — I didn’t still think I was dreaming, as this was too rational an interchange to be in one of my dreams. Nevertheless, my natural curiosity reared its head, and I started parsing the possibilities out of habit.

  “Please leave it alone, Sebastian,” he said, and again his voice was so tinged with sadness that it caught me short.

  “It was you!” I finally comprehended, and blurted it out before I could consider the ramifications of speaking, “I overheard you killing a man, and then I showed up a couple of hours later and ask you to translate yourself into English for me. Something so unbelievable, only I would be capable of it. Was that man your brother?”

  “Oh, goodness no,” he laughed at me, relaxing, “I don’t have a brother. The whole brother and mother and inheritance bit was made up. I substituted some words and names, and it became a very different conversation. It wasn’t even in Czech, we were speaking Bulgarian, his native tongue.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I marveled at him, “Why did you kill him?”

  “I was paid to,” he answered, looking at me very thoughtfully, as if weighing his options, “I’m a professional assassin. That creature was a very nasty man who was making expensive trouble for some other very nasty men. I resolved their problem for them, pocketed a thousand pounds, and reduced the number of nasty men in the world by one.”

  “You’re going to have to kill me, now, aren’t you?” I finally realized the folly of pursuing this line of questioning, hoping that he wasn’t telling me all this because he knew I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone else about it.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said after a very fraught pause, “Too many people know I’m here with you. Besides, I destroyed your evidence.”

  “You didn’t, though,” I said before I could stop myself, “I gave a copy to my friend at Scotland Yard.”

  “I really wi
sh you hadn’t,” he stood up and I cringed back in my chair, hoping it wasn’t going to hurt, “Relax, Sebastian, I’m not going to kill you.”

  “What are you going to do?” I wondered, not relaxing one bit.

  “Well, I could ask you to try and get your copy back from your friend Twister,” he put his hands back in his pockets and walked idly about the room, “But that doesn’t seem likely. A baronet working as a cop would have to be exceptionally conscientious, so he will have handed it on by now. A correct translation will be on his desk by tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have to disappear, I guess. I have a dozen escape plans already set up. One does, in my profession.”

  “Could he connect the conversation to you in any way?” I wondered, hoping for a better solution than his disappearance.

  “No. You didn’t transcribe my name. You did his name, of course, and some names that might lead to the people who hired me to kill him, as well as some rather grotesque braggadocio about his various crimes. But no, he didn’t actually know my real name. He thought I was a crooked estate agent.”

  “Well, then, you’re all right,” I was relieved. Despite being a killer, I liked him very much, and I would hate to never see him again, “If there’s nothing in my notes to connect the man in the office to Professor Beran of Merton College, Oxford, nobody will ever know anything about it.”

  “Except you, of course,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I protested quite vehemently.

  “Really? Why not?”

  “It’s not like you’re killing innocent people,” I reasoned, “After all, killing and murder aren’t necessarily the same thing.”

  “That’s a very original approach to my profession,” he laughed heartily.

  “Well, honestly, what difference does it make, if he was a criminal? If his neck is broken by the Crown or by you, the same end is achieved. Gangsters killing gangsters goes on of its own accord, I see no reason you shouldn’t profit by it.”

  “I doubt your Twister would see it that way,” he sat down on the sofa across from me.