Lady Emmeline and the Swansong Caper

by Anna Reader

  As soon as his mother had finished speaking and without a word of explanation, Gussie dashed out of the room, and Purdie and Inspector Dashwood were left to appraise one another. “There’s a small pocket in the lining,” Purdie said helpfully, directing the Inspector’s attention back to her python-skin purse. “I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.”

  “Madam,” Inspector Dashwood said smoothly, handing the item back to her with the glimmer of a smile, “I assure you I haven’t.”

  Gussie suddenly came tearing back into the room, and pressed a volume into his mother’s hands.

  “What on earth is this, Augustus?” she demanded after a brief pause, thoroughly bemused.

  “I believe Mr Featherington-Blyth may have taken you literally, madam,” Inspector Dashwood said, his lips twitching, “when you said that we should give you Palgrave.”

  “Stupid boy,” Mrs Featherington-Blyth snorted, thrusting the volume back at her dim-witted offspring. “This is no time to be reading verse!”

  Purdie edged her way ever-closer to the door, intending to use the ludicrous distraction to make good her escape.

  “Until next time, Miss….” Inspector Dashwood said, offering his hand.

  “Lady,” Purdie corrected him, in what she hoped were crushing tones. “Lady Emmeline Purdew.” And with that she was gone, absolutely convinced that they would all hear the platinum rattling around in her stomach like a penny in a piggy-bank.

  FOUR

  “It is not in the least amusing,” Purdie remonstrated, as Pongo wept with laughter. “I can’t think how it can have happened.”

  “Engaged to Gussie?” Pongo cried in delight, wiping the tears from her eyes. “It’s the best thing I’ve heard in ages, Purdie – you absolute noodle.” This was followed by further whoops of mirth as Pongo threw herself back in her chair in Fortnum and Mason’s tea-room, almost losing her balance and dousing herself in Lapsang Souchong.

  Purdie frowned at her friend whilst coating her scone in a generous covering of strawberry jam.

  “Really, though, Purdie, what on earth happened?”

  Much as she trusted Pongo, her long-time friend and accomplice, Purdie was not quite ready to confess her father’s recent conversion to a life of crime. Neither was she willing to reveal that he was ill; if she didn’t speak of it, she decided, then perhaps it wasn’t real.

  “I suppose I must have had too much champagne,” she said with a sigh. “He cornered me in the garden-room, you see, and at the time it seemed very much as though saying “yes” was the only way I was going to be able to remove the bally cactus from the small of my back. It’s taken a great deal of persuasion to stop him from putting an announcement in The Times,” she added with a grimace. “If he does that, then I’ll really be in the soup.”

  Pongo dried her eyes, smiled rather ruefully at her friend, and helped herself to more tea. “I say, Purdie, I am sorry for finding it quite so funny. It’s just that it’s such an absurd thought – Gussie’s a darling, really, but he’s hardly the Lancelot to your Guinevere.”

  “It’s not me you have to convince, Pongo, it’s Gussie. He’s got it into his head that he loves me – which is utterly ridiculous, of course. Really, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation which wasn’t entirely comprised of me asking him to keep a fair distance.”

  “I fear it’s not your conversation he’s interested in,” Pongo replied with a chuckle. “Well, there’s only one solution,” she concluded, before reaching for a macaron and taking an enthusiastic bite.

  “What is it?” Purdie demanded, desperation persuading her to speak at a volume not often heard over afternoon tea.

  Pongo, however, would not be rushed. Fortnum’s macarons were her only vice (if one didn’t include smoking, drinking, or flirting - which of course she didn’t), and much as she loved darling Purdie, the news of her impending nuptials must come second to this lemon curd confection. Pongo swallowed the last mouthful, brushed a crumb from her scarlet lips, and settled back into her chair. “We will simply need to find a woman who is prepared to reciprocate Gussie’s affections,” she announced at last. “Once he knows what it is to be adored, he will soon forget about his love for you.”

  Whilst she didn’t much enjoy the notion of being cast aside, even by Gussie, Purdie could certainly appreciate the logic of her friend’s suggestion. “It’s not a bad idea,” she acknowledged, “but where on earth are we going to find a girl like that?”

  “You forget,” Pongo replied, “that whilst he might not be our idea of a Mr Rochester, Gussie is actually an extremely eligible young man. For heaven’s sake, his father owns most of Surrey.”

  “We can’t set a fortune-hunter onto him, Pongo! I might not want to marry Gussie, but I wouldn’t wish that on him.”

  “I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” Pongo retorted. “I’m simply saying that his case is not a hopeless one. Actually, I think I might know just the girl.”

  “Who?” Purdie demanded, incredulous.

  “Pass me that macaron, and I’ll tell you.” Pongo grinned at her friend and rested her dimpled chin in a cupped hand.

  “You are thoroughly enjoying this, you rotter,” Purdie said, passing the delicate violet meringue across the table to her irrepressible comrade-in-arms.

  “Well, you can hardly blame me,” Pongo fired back without a hint of remorse. “Only imagine what you would be like if our positions were reversed – it would be open season. Anyway, it’s Laetitia Beresford.”

  “What is?”

  “Oh do keep up, Purdie,” Pongo replied with a sigh. “The girl I intend to launch at Gussie. She’s Mango’s brother’s wife’s sister, and she’s staying with us at the moment. I think she’s just the ticket.”

  Pongo’s family was an immense and complicated thing – there might as well have been a revolving door installed at her parents’ smart Kensington home, such was the regularity with which their hordes of eccentric relatives drifted through. Since Purdie and Pongo had been the best of chums since they were still babes-in-arms, however, Purdie was fully initiated into the manifold obscurities of the McVitie clan.

  Mango, dear reader, was one of Pongo’s many first cousins, and had had the good fortune to be in the year below Pongo and Purdie at St. Penrith’s School. Since Mango’s father was stationed in India, however, she’d lived with the McVities for the past five years, and was to all intents and purposes considered to be Pongo’s sister. Mango’s brother, Rolo, was a charming young man who had also lived with Pongo’s family until his own marriage to Snooky Beresford the previous autumn. Since their nuptials, the couple had been residing in a charming apartment situated opposite the McVitie establishment; indeed, it seemed to Purdie as though the McVities were essentially establishing a commune of sorts on Nightingale Road, which struck her as being eminently sensible, and certainly economical when it came to postage.

  Purdie had not previously had the pleasure of making Laetitia Beresford’s acquaintance – although the name certainly tugged at something lurking in the back of her mind, and for some reason made her think inexplicably of shield-maidens.

  “I can’t think where I’ve heard that name before,” Purdie confessed, “although it’s certainly ringing distant and rather peculiar bells.”

  “Yes, it would do,” Pongo said, refilling the tea-pot with hot water. “She’s the one who head-butted the Master of Magdalen’s wife.”

  “Ha!” Purdie cried, clapping her hands together in delight, and causing several of the sterner-looking patrons of the establishment to frown at her through a constellation of pince-nez and monocles. “Lettuce Beresford – of course! That’s too exquisite for words, Pongo.”

  The name “Lettuce Beresford” had become extremely well known to the girls’ peers the previous summer, when the Oxford University Vikings Re-enactment Society - which counted Lettuce amongst its surprisingly healthy number - had decided to stage a re-imagining of the famous raid on Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey.r />
  Having alighted upon the idea of using Magdalen College Chapel as a substitute for said Abbey, the sheepskin-clad students had leapt from their punts (cunningly disguised as long-boats) and made their way up the bank, howling Norse battle-cries in their cut-glass English accents. In doing so, they had, alas, managed to burst upon a picnic being hosted by the Vice-Chancellor. Lettuce, who was generally something of an introvert, had drunk three horns of Pimm’s before boarding her punt earlier that morning in an effort to overcome her nerves, and was therefore distinctly pie-eyed by the time she launched herself up the bank and towards the hazy spires. When the Master’s wife suddenly loomed up before her, waggling her finger and declaring immediate rustication, Lettuce thus found herself channelling a Thor-like rage. Before she knew what she was about, the poor girl had ploughed her forehead forcibly into the woman’s nose, seized momentarily by the spirit of the Valkyries. Chaos ensued; the Master’s wife screamed; one of the Vikings passed out when he saw the copious amounts of blood streaming from said orifice; and Lettuce found herself in front of the Dean.

  “You say she’s staying with you?” Purdie asked. “Are you sure that’s safe? She sounds like a complete lunatic, Pongo.”

  “Oh no,” Pongo replied, wafting a hand in dismissal. “She’s perfectly charming. The slight scar on her forehead is the only thing which betrays her moment of insanity. And the fact that the briefest mention of Pimm’s turns her green.”

  “That’s as may be,” Purdie conceded, “but why do you think she might go for Gussie?”

  “I happen to know,” Pongo replied with a rather smug smile, “that she was firm friends with his younger sister at St. Penrith’s, and has had a distinct soft spot for Gussie since she spent a glorious summer holiday with the Featherington-Blyths in Surrey six years ago.”

  “Ha!” said Purdie, her eyes brightening with a mounting sense of possibility. “This could be utterly perfect, Pongo. It is absolutely imperative that we bring them together before Gussie gets anywhere near the forthcoming marriages section in The Times.”

  Pongo stared into the distance, her aquamarine eyes looking far beyond the trays of cakes and porcelain and reaching into the ether for a solution. “My mother,” she said slowly, “is having a sherry party tomorrow evening. I swore blind I wouldn’t go – I never trust parties centred on such an insipid beverage - but if we can persuade her to invite Mrs Featherington-Blyth, then I may well change my mind. I know that Lettuce will be there - she and Ma are thick as thieves at the moment, and Lettuce has agreed to do all the flowers.”

  “Mrs Featherington-Blyth is absolutely potty about well-executed fauna,” Purdie interjected. “That could be our in. Once Mrs F-B and Lettuce start talking about the vagaries of hydrangeas, Gussie’s fate will be sealed.”

  “Right, then,” Pongo said, drawing on her gloves, “I’ll go and have a word with Ma. You’ll have to come too, of course – we need to make sure the trap is properly laid.”

  “I’ll be there at seven,” Purdie said, rising from her chair with a renewed sense of purpose. “If we can get Lettuce invited to tea at the Featherington-Blyths’ by close of business tomorrow, this whole bally crisis may yet be averted. Good-day to you, Pongo.”

  “And to you, old thing.”

  And with that the women went their separate ways.

  When she arrived home later that afternoon, Purdie found her father in the library, pouring over a pamphlet from the Royal Portrait Gallery.

  “I have a bone to pick with you,” she announced, convinced she could hear the cuff-link rattling as she leaned over to kiss his forehead.

  Lord Alverstock looked up at her, a sudden zeal shining in his eyes. “I have it, Em. I know exactly what I shall steal next.”

  “Steady on, Pa,” she cautioned, looking over her shoulder to check that she’d shut the door behind her. “I’m not sure we should be bandying those kinds of words around willy-nilly.” Satisfied that they were indeed alone, she drew up a chair and tried to get a glimpse of whatever it was he was looking at.

  “Steal; borrow; curate, whatever you like, my love. The point is that I know just what I shall be gunning for.”

  “What we shall be gunning for,” she corrected. “What is it?”

  With a triumphant smile, he spun the pamphlet around and poked his finger at a thumbnail portrait of Sir Reginald Thackeray, the infamous nineteenth century explorer. Purdie looked down at the ruddy, elaborately moustachioed face, and then across at her father, one eyebrow raised in curiosity.

  “I gave this bally painting to your mother as a wedding present, you know,” Lord Alverstock announced. “It was painted by your great-aunt Augusta in her hey-day, after she and Sir Reginald had embarked on a short affaire de coeur. Alas, he disappeared in the Congo when the oil was barely dry on the canvas, and Aunt Augusta subsequently hid the portrait in her attic for twenty years, too heartbroken to look upon that splendidly hirsute face again.

  “She continued painting landscapes in the meantime, and attracted quite a following in the art-world. She was really rather famous for a while, I believe – I daresay she’d have been invited to be a member of the Royal Academy, if she hadn’t been a woman.”

  “I do wish you’d tell me these things,” Purdie replied, with a long-suffering sigh. “That is extremely juicy family folklore, Pa.”

  “Mea culpa, sprog. One simply never thinks of these things day to day,” Lord Alverstock replied, with a touch of remorse.

  “In any case,” Purdie continued, patting her father’s hand in instant forgiveness, “why, then, is it hanging in the Royal Portrait Gallery, rather than our house?”

  “Well, my love, even though Aunt Augusta kept the painting privately, such was her following that news of its existence soon spread. When she died,” he explained, “the Tax Man came knocking at our door, demanding that we pay enormous death duties on the piece. The blood-suckers knew full well that the only way we could raise the money they were asking for was to hock it, and so we did – to the Gallery. Augusta would have been absolutely disgusted. She was violently anti-establishment – border-line anarchist, actually, which I believe you can detect in her use of watercolour – so the thought that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had robbed the family of her work, only to display it in a state Gallery...well. Disaster.”

  “So, you intend to take it back.”

  “Precisely, my love,” Lord Alverstock replied cheerfully, picking up the pamphlet and staring intently at the picture. “It’s what dear Aunt Augusta would have wanted – bring Sir Reginald home for a spell, and away from prying eyes.”

  Purdie sat down in the armchair opposite her father, and lit a cigarette. “How,” she asked, blowing a perfect smoke-ring into the air, “do you propose to remove it?”

  “Oh, I haven’t the foggiest yet. G and T? The sun must be over the yard-arm somewhere.”

  “Super,” Purdie replied, before slipping into silent contemplation. Just as she felt the ghost of an idea beginning to materialise deep in her unconscious, Raddigan, Lord Alverstock’s butler, knocked on the door and interrupted her train of thought.

  “Excuse me, my Lord,” he said, in his impeccably modulated voice, “there is a young man here to see you.”

  “Is there, by jove,” Lord Alverstock replied. “Who is it, Raddigan – anyone we know?”

  “I fancy not, my Lord” Raddigan answered; then, after an infinitesimal hesitation, sufficient to lend weight to his next pronouncement, he continued. “He says he is from Scotland Yard.”

  Lord Alverstock raised his eyebrows, but continued to pour their drinks as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “What’s that brother of yours done now, eh, Em? Show him in, Raddigan.”

  Purdie swallowed hard and, for the third time that day, felt sure she could hear the cuff-link rattling. Too, too shame-making.

  FIVE

  “Lord Alverstock,” Inspector Dashwood said as he made his way into the room. “I must apologise for the interruption.”<
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  “Not at all,” his Lordship replied graciously. “Can I get you something to drink? My daughter and I were on the cusp of a gin.”

  Purdie tried valiantly to look disinterested; he really was irresponsibly good-looking, she thought to herself, particularly for a man of the law.

  “Thank you, my Lord, but no,” the Inspector replied with a smile. “Off limits while I’m working, I’m afraid.” He looked down at Purdie - who was trying to strike what she considered to be a nonchalant pose in her armchair - and inclined his head. “Lady Emmeline,” he said in his smooth baritone, “good evening.”

  “Oh. Hallo.” she responded casually. “I believe we met earlier today – how do you do?”

  “Reasonably well, thank you,” he replied, accepting the proffered cigarette. “Although still short a cufflink.”

  “A cufflink?” Lord Alverstock repeated. “You know it’s the damndest thing, but I…”

  “Inspector Dashwood and I met at the Featherington-Blyths’ earlier, Pa,” Purdie interjected quickly, desperately trying to prevent a catastrophic confession. “It seems that Gussie’s uncle has had something stolen, and that the perpetrator left a cufflink at the scene, of all things. Inspector Dashwood was sent to investigate the crime.” She then buried her nose in her gin and tonic, praying that her irresponsible parent would pick up the proverbial baton.

  “How extraordinary,” Lord Alverstock declared, without missing a beat. “One doesn’t really expect burglars to be wearing cuffs – but then, perhaps that’s mere snobbery. No reason why the poor fellows shouldn’t dress for work, as it were.”

  “Quite,” Inspector Dashwood replied, mildly. “You know, perhaps I’ll take that drink after all.”