A Royal Pain

by Rhys Bowen

  At last my fingers located a crack in the wall, what felt like the side of a door, but I could still feel no knob, nor the top of the door. I put my ear to it and could hear faint voices beyond it.

  “That girl was here this afternoon,” I heard a man’s voice say clearly. “She was planning to attend the meeting tonight.”

  “Yes, I thought I saw her in the hall.” Was that Edward’s voice? It was too muffled for me to be sure.

  “Do you think she suspects anything?” The third voice appeared to be female, but deep and guttural, with a pronounced foreign accent.

  “What does it matter? She’ll be too late, won’t she?” Edward’s voice again?

  “You still mean to go through with it, then?”

  “I know what happened to Roberts—stupid little prig with his lower-class morals. If I were planning to back out, I’d be on my way to Australia as fast as my legs could carry me.”

  “I am still disturbed about Roberts. Was it really necessary to kill him?”

  “He would have betrayed us.” This was the foreign woman’s guttural voice.

  “And you still think this is a wise course of action? Given the situation?”

  “What option do we have? The first attempts failed and time is definitely running out.”

  “It was stupid to kill the baroness.”

  “No choice, old boy. She was going to telephone the princess’s father, and that would never have done, would it?”

  So it seemed there were three speakers, two males, one female, all speaking softly as though they didn’t want to be overheard.

  “So everything’s in place, then? Anything you need us to do?”

  “Have the escape route ready, if either of us manages to get away.”

  “It’s not the ideal situation. I’ve said that all along.”

  “It will have to do. Now or never, don’t you agree?”

  “I suppose I have to agree. I never thought this was a good idea in the beginning. What’s it going to achieve, apart from turning half the population against us?”

  “You’re not going soft on us, are you, Solomon?”

  “You know my views on violence. Only when absolutely necessary.”

  “Quite right. When absolutely necessary.”

  The voices were moving off. Something else was said but I couldn’t catch it. I thought I heard some kind of thud. I felt my way back down the hall and into that broom cupboard in case they reappeared suddenly. But they didn’t. I waited and waited until my legs were stiff and cramped from standing bent over among the mops and buckets. Finally I came out and listened. Nothing. There must have been another way out from the room in which they had been speaking.

  I worked my way back to the main hall. It was dark outside by now with a street lamp twinkling in through one of the windows. The hall had become a place of danger—with flickering shadows and strange shapes. A raucous burst of singing from a pub made me fully aware that I was in an area where there was not likely to be safety. Slowly and carefully I made my way down the aisle, until I had reached the front doors. I pushed hard, but they refused to give. I searched for a handle. There was none. From what I could tell, they were padlocked from the outside. I was trapped in here.

  There had to be another way out. Those speakers had gone through what appeared to be a solid wall and had not returned. I made my way back again, conscious now of every small sound, the echo of my feet on a stone floor and mysterious rustles and creaks which were probably no more than an old building settling in the night air but which sounded horribly ominous to me. I couldn’t make myself believe that I was completely alone. I saw moving shadows in every corner and jumped at a passing motorcar’s horn.

  “Buck up, Georgie, this isn’t like you.” I gave myself a stiff talking-to. I, who had dared to stay up on the ramparts to spot my grandfather’s ghost; I, who had been lowered down the castle well by my brother and his friends—now I was scared to be alone in the dark? Well, this was a little different. I had just heard several people confessing to killing the baroness and Sidney Roberts, from what I could gather. That meant my life wasn’t worth much if they discovered me here.

  I made my way slowly back down that narrow passage and found the crack in the wall again. I felt around but couldn’t come up with a corresponding crack for the other side of a door, nor could I find any kind of handle. I pushed. I poked. Then in frustration I kicked at the floorboard. I felt something give and part of the wall swung silently inward. I hesitated only a second before stepping through. I knew where I was instantly, of course. That characteristic smell of old books and pipe tobacco. I was back in the bookshop. So there had been another way out that the police hadn’t discovered. Not very bright of them.

  I wondered which floor I was on. There was almost no light. I wondered if I could find a light switch and if I dared to turn it on. I stood silently listening, just in case the speakers had not left but only moved to another part of the shop. I certainly didn’t want to bump into anyone in the dark. To reassure myself, I reached back to touch the doorway through which I had come, and couldn’t find it. I backed up, my heart beating faster now, and touched bookshelves on three sides of me. If it had been a secret entrance, it had swung back into place. I was now trapped in the bookshop.

  After waiting what seemed like an eternity, listening for any sound or movement, I left the shelter of my side aisle, feeling my way along the bookshelf. Ahead of me I could see a faint glimmer of light, barely enough to outline the rows of bookshelves. Slowly I made my way forward, toward that light, until my foot stubbed against something soft. I bent down, then recoiled in horror. A person was lying there. Cautiously I reached out and touched, feeling down a sleeve until I located a hand. It was still warm. I held the wrist for a pulse, but I couldn’t detect one. The faint glimmer of light outlined the glasses on a skeletal face. It had to be Mr. Solomon.

  I should go for help. Maybe there was still a chance to save him. I inched around him and felt my way forward. The glimmer of light grew until I could see it was a street lamp, shining in through the dusty panes of the front windows. I let out a huge sigh of relief. I’d be able to find the nearest policeman and tell him everything I knew. Whatever these people had planned, I’d be able to stop them. I grabbed the front door handle. It moved but the door wouldn’t open. I shook it, jiggled, pushed with all my might, but apart from making the bell jangle peevishly, nothing happened. They had locked the door behind them. I was trapped in here with Mr. Solomon’s body.

  I looked at the windows and wondered if I could find anything strong enough to break them with, but the panes were so small that I’d never be able to get out that way.

  I sank to the floor beside the window and rested my arms on the wide window ledge. At this moment I didn’t want to be grown up and independent and on my own in a big city. I wanted more than anything to be home. I wanted to be with Nanny, and Binky, and even Fig at this moment, in a safe place far from here. And I wanted someone to rescue me: I peered out of the window, hoping that my grandfather would come and break down the door and take me away. But I had told him I was going out with friends and he had no idea who my friends were or how to contact them. And Darcy was far away in the country, taking moonlight strolls with Hanni—since Edward had left the field entirely open for him.

  I’d just have to sit here until morning, when people came to work and I could break a window and shout for help. And then . . . then the police would come and I’d have to explain how I was trapped alone with Mr. Solomon’s body. And they’d only have my word that I wasn’t one of those who killed him. I could picture Harry Sugg’s annoying grin. “Oh yes?” he’d say. “Got locked in by mistake, did you? And this man just happened to die by mistake, did he? Well, I don’t see anyone else inside this locked building, so do you mind telling me who killed him if you didn’t?”

  Thoughts buzzed angrily around inside my head. These communists were planning something awful, something that Sidney had refused to take
part in and Mr. Solomon had objected to: a violent demonstration of some kind—taking over the Houses of Parliament or even killing the prime minister maybe. And if one of them came back to the shop in the morning, perhaps with a van to take away the body, they would find me and I’d be disposed of too. I sat there in the lamplight as it shone on the books piled on the floor around me. Really this was the untidiest shop I’d ever seen. Close to me was a stack of children’s books. I started looking through them, hoping to find a familiar and comforting friend from my nursery days. But they turned out to be foreign, with illustrations of evil witches and savage ogres. Not at all comforting. At the bottom of the pile there was one called Let’s Learn Russian. The cover had a picture of two happy, smiling communist children, carrying a hammer and sickle. How appropriate, I thought. Perhaps they handed out a copy to everyone who attended those stupid meetings. I flicked it open.

  The Russian alphabet is different from ours, I read. You will need to master it before you can read Russian words. My eye scanned down the page. Russian uses the letter C when we would use the letter S. My gaze moved further. The Russian letter R is written like our P. I found myself thinking of the two letters someone had sent to Hanni, the first time with a question mark, the second time with a cross through them. C.P. not C.P. but S.R.—Sidney Roberts?

  Which meant it had to be Edward Fotheringay and his stupid Cambridge leftist secret society. He had studied modern languages, German and Russian. His mother had been Russian. He claimed he had been in India but Colonel Horsmonden had never met him there and Edward had been evasive in answering the colonel’s questions. Which now made me suspect that he had never been in India. He’d been in Russia, training for the moment when he was sent back here to overthrow the government by force, as the communists had done there. Or maybe to create chaos and perhaps a new world war, out of which world communism would emerge triumphant. I should have picked up the signs earlier. He was the one who mixed the cocktails at the party and tried to kill Sidney there. And he had tried to involve Hanni. I didn’t see how or why, unless he wanted to stir up trouble between England and Germany, or use her somehow to put the German communists in power. But she was naïve enough and he was handsome enough that she’d believe anything he told her.

  So the next question was: had Edward persuaded her to help him kill Sidney? But it didn’t make sense. We had been at the bookshop together. She had gone up those stairs only moments before me and she certainly had no knife on her, and she certainly hadn’t learned to kill at the convent.

  I closed the book and put it back. This was absurd. The letters probably had nothing at all to do with Sidney Roberts or his death. The night dragged on. I must have dozed from time to time, because I sat up with a crick in my neck and noticed that the sky had taken on a grayish tinge. Daylight was coming. Poor Mr. Solomon was lying there, his mouth and eyes open, looking as if he was a wax dummy in Madame Tussauds.

  I had to find a way out of here. I prowled as far from the light as I dared, examining side aisles and kicking walls for any sign of a hidden door. But by the time it was light, I had pushed and kicked at every bookshelf and still had found nothing. Of course, there was always the attic that Mr. Solomon had mentioned. It was certainly worth a try. I went upstairs and spotted a trapdoor in the ceiling. It had a cord attached. I pulled and a ladder hung down. I went up it cautiously because I am rather afraid of spiders and I hate cobwebs. It certainly was dusty up there. Piles of books were stacked next to old trunks and shapes hidden under dust sheets. In the half-light they looked ominous and I almost expected a sheet to fly off, revealing God knows what.

  But I made it successfully to the small window at the far end. The sill was clean where the police had dusted for prints, and luckily they must have forced the window open because I didn’t have to struggle too hard to do so. I dragged over a trunk, stood on it, and stuck my head out. The world outside was blanketed in thick mist so that it was impossible to see more than a few feet. What I could see was not encouraging. Oh, golly, the roof was steep and ended in a sheer drop. The slates were damp with the heavy mist. I didn’t relish trying to climb out and if I started to slide, I’d have no way of stopping myself.

  I climbed back down inside and piled books on top of the trunk until they were high enough for me to climb out of the window. I eased myself out, then pulled myself up until I was standing on the window ledge, holding on to the top of the window frame for support. The only way to go was up. I inched my way around the dormer window, clambering up the side of it until I could reach the top of the roof. I was thankful that I had worn my old lisle stockings and not my good silk ones, and my crepe-soled sandals rather than leather. Even so the slates were horribly slippery and I could hardly breathe because my heart was beating so fast. I straddled the roof apex, rather like riding a horse. In the direction I was facing I could make out that my roof ended against the blank wall of a taller building. No point in going that way, then. I couldn’t see any drainpipe or way down at all.

  So I turned around and moved in the other direction, inching forward with my heart hammering in my chest. It was an awfully long way down. I reached a cluster of chimney pots and managed to maneuver past them, then continued on as the roof turned at a right angle. I came to the end of the building and stopped, biting back tears of frustration. Between my roof and the next building was a gap. It wasn’t particularly wide but there was no way I could lower myself down to the gutter and then turn to a position from which I could leap across, even if I had the nerve to leap across. And if I leaped, I had nothing to hold on to.

  I had no idea what to do now. My muscles were trembling from the exertion and tension and I didn’t want to go back to that attic window. If I shouted from up here, would anyone be able to hear me? Certainly not see me in this mist. Then the mist swirled and parted for a moment and I heard the lapping of water. Somewhere below me was the Thames. I waited patiently for the mist to part again. The river was a good way down but directly below me, and I had jumped off a tall rock into the loch at home many times. The question was, would it be deep enough? This was answered almost immediately by the deep sound of a ship’s siren sounding eerie and mournful through the mist. Big cargo ships docked here, and it appeared to be high tide. Of course it would be deep enough. Anyway, I couldn’t come up with a better plan after a night with little sleep and a lot of terror.

  The sky became lighter and the mist swirled and broke apart. Every now and then I was treated to a clear view of the gray waters below. I could do this. I was going to do it. I swung my leg over and moved, crablike, down the steep surface. A slate came loose and slithered down the roof to plop into the water. A pair of pigeons took off, fluttering, from the roof nearby, almost making my heart stop and making me lose my balance. Through the mist behind me came sounds: the city was waking up.

  I don’t know how long I would have perched there, trying to pluck up courage, but I realized that my foot was going to sleep. That wouldn’t do. I had to act now. I took a deep breath, stood up on the gutter, then jumped outward. I hit the water with a mighty splash. The cold took my breath away. I went under and kicked to the surface, spluttering, the taste of oily water in my mouth. Mist curled around the surface of the water and hid the banks, making me unsure in which direction I was facing. My skirt clung around my legs like some horrible type of sea creature as I fought to stay calm. The distant moan of a foghorn reminded me that big ships sailed here. I had no wish to be run down by a passing cargo boat. To my left I could make out the dark outline of the building from which I had just jumped and I struck out for it.

  Now the only problem would be finding a way up from the river. A blank wall presented itself to me. Then I heard a shout and saw men standing on a high dock that jutted out to my right. Suddenly one of them peeled off his jacket and jumped in, swimming to me with powerful strokes.

  “It’s all right, love, I’ve got you,” he said. He put an arm around my neck and dragged me back to the shore.

>   I wanted to tell him that I was perfectly capable of swimming to the steps by myself, but he was holding me so tightly I couldn’t talk. We reached a ladder, extending up to a dock, and hands hauled me unceremoniously out of the water.

  “Well done, Fred,” voices said.

  “You’ll be all right now, love.”

  Then one said, “You shouldn’t have done it. He’s not worth it. There’s always something to live for. You’ll see.” And I realized that they thought I’d been trying to kill myself. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be indignant.

  “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “I got locked in a building by some communists and the only way to escape was onto the roof, and the only way down from there was to jump.”

  “Of course it was, darling.” They looked at each other, grinning knowingly. “Come on, we’ll take you back to the hut and get you a cup of tea. No need to mention this to the police.”

  And I realized, of course, that suicide was a crime.

  Chapter 36

  An hour later I was safely back at Rannoch House, confronting an angry grandfather.

  “Almost out of my mind with worry, I was,” he was yelling. “I didn’t know whether something had happened to you or you were just staying late at one of them fancy parties you go to.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, and explained the whole thing to him.

  “Ruddy silly thing to do,” was all he could say afterward. “One of these days you’ll go too far, my girl. If you was a cat, you’d have used up several of your nine lives already.”