by Myers, Amy
Honoria began to contemplate the night ahead. She remembered the touch of the Prince’s hand during the waltz, the pressure of his arm as he led her in to supper, the whispered words over the galantine of chicken. The look in Laetitia’s eye! Well, all was fair in love. And Laetitia would never hold it against her. The Prince was far too attractive for her not to understand. She turned her thoughts from delights to come to find Lord Arthur handing her a glass of champagne. Honoria did not care for Lord Arthur – he was too suave for her taste and, moreover, was clearly not in love with her, which did not endear her to him – but her drunkenness overcame her dislike. Besides, she had witnessed an interesting little scene earlier. She decided to be arch.
‘Arthur, dear, what a lovely evening! Dear Laetitia is so exquisite at organising these little dances. Now do dance with me. Poor me is all alone.’
‘Dear Mrs Hartham, I’d be delighted. How kind of you to ask me.’
The sarcasm passed her by. She gathered the train of her pale blue satin dress in one hand, and they took the floor.
‘Dear Lord Arthur, do you recall the Marquess of Stevenage’s soirée earlier this year? Dear Mr Wilde was there. Dear, dear Oscar.’
Lord Arthur frowned. ‘Writes some strange books, that fellow.’
‘Nonsense, Lord Arthur. What can you mean? Lovely, lovely little books, about swallows and princes – happy princes.’ She gave a slight hiccup. She had been reading The Happy Prince to her younger son. She had cried. Dear Oscar. Thus she thought of him though she had met him but once. Proud of her association with the arts, she was oblivious to the fact that his reputation had somewhat changed with the decadent Picture of Dorian Gray published earlier that year, and was somewhat puzzled, therefore, by Arthur’s reaction.
‘Hardly know the fellow,’ said Arthur shortly. ‘Met his wife. Liked her. No friend of his.’ Few in Society were now.
That reminded Mrs Hartham of the interesting little scene she had witnessed earlier. ‘Come, Lord Arthur. You’re too modest. Now we’re friends aren’t we? After all, I do know your little secret.’
Seeing him for once disconcerted, she tapped him playfully with her fan. ‘Come, Lord Arthur, I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to be the one to tell dear Laetitia, would you? Or the dear Duke? So just you be nice to me.’ She flashed a brilliant little smile at him, as the dance ended.
Lord Arthur did not return it. His face was devoid of any expression at all.
‘My dance with you, Honoria,’ said the Duke grimly. He had decided enough was enough and arrived to claim his own, even if the lady had made it painfully clear his company would not be required that night.
‘Oh George,’ Honoria giggled. ‘How delightful. I did not see you there. And Mr Marshall too.’ He had arrived, clearly anxious for a word with Lord Arthur which His Lordship seemed indisposed to grant.
Honoria held out her glass again. The giddiness of being the cynosure of so many male eyes was as heady as the champagne. ‘George, my champagne. I’m so thirsty.’
The Duke, disgruntled, was determined mot to give ground, but instead turned rather pointedly to Marshall: ‘Who was that chap von Holstein you were talking about?’
‘Von Holstein? Possibly the most dangerous man in Europe today,’ said Walter grimly. ‘He prefers to remain in the background, for the trappings of power do not interest him. The practice of it does. He pulls the strings of Germany’s foreign policy but because he remains in the background no one knows what his aims are. He is a Machiavelli. A blackmailer. An intriguer. He builds up dossiers on those that displease him and quietly, catlike, bides his time. A bachelor, a wine-lover – and a very powerful man. He is said to have a hand in the choosing of all Germany’s diplomats.’
‘Like that fellow Herzenberg?’
Walter nodded. ‘Presumably. Possibly the Baron von Elburg too. You’ve heard of him? Another London diplomat. Is he a Kaiser man? Or the Chancellor’s? Or von Holstein’s? Who knows how these threads link up?’
Bored from the moment politics were mentioned, Honoria began once more to contemplate the night ahead. It was time to put His Highness out of his torment. To let him know of the bliss in store for him. She, Honoria, would be his. Ah, how happy he would be. Happy, happy Prince. She giggled. He would be the Happy Prince of Herzenberg. She emitted a soft champagne giggle to herself. She summoned the nearest footman to her side. He was just a footman to her, a person in livery. She did not see the boy’s round face, eyes goggle-eyed at the chatter, the perfume, the swish of silks and satin. It was Edward Jackson’s first ball.
‘You,’ said Honoria Hartham imperiously, daringly, in case George’s attention was drawn to her, and half hoping it would be. ‘I want you to take this to His Highness.’ She plucked a flower from her corsage.
‘What ’Ighness?’ Edward managed to stutter, glancing round fearfully for Mr Hobbs in case he was overheard opening his mouth against instructions.
Honoria sighed. Really, the class of servant dear Laetitia was employing nowadays was quite impossible.
‘The Prince von Herzenberg.’ She turned and pointed him out to Edward. He grinned, as Honoria said: ‘Tell him to think on Mr Wilde’s story and wear this flower for me.’
Edward had long since come to the conclusion that while gentlemen were stupid ladies were even stupider, but set off obediently clutching the yellow carnation in his now slightly grubby Berlin-gloved hands.
Honoria turned to find the Duke’s eyes riveted on her. Had he heard? He stepped in front of Lord Arthur and took her arm, none too gently. Just as an excited Edward Jackson returned from his mission.
‘Prince says to tell you ’e understands, mum.’
She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, my man. Thank you so much.’
The Duke glared and Lord Arthur stared in some puzzlement at Edward Jackson, still hovering uncertainly, until the boy blushed and began to back away.
‘What did that boy mean?’ said the Duke slowly. ‘Tell you he understands.’
‘Nothing, you naughty man. Just a lady’s secret. And I can keep a secret. I can keep everyone’s secret. Yours, and yours – and yours!’ She chuckled, tapping each flirtatiously with her fan.
It was well after one o’clock in the morning that the last guest departed and the house party crept wearily to their beds. It was thus almost two when the last footman climbed wearily to his second-floor pigeonhole, too tired even to ponder the delights of the first-floor women’s quarters that he was so strictly forbidden to savour. Auguste, his duties finished an hour since, was already slumbering fitfully, dreaming of a presentation of crawfish à la provençale, with a smiling Escoffier standing by in approval. The crawfish grew and grew in size, their claws stronger and stronger, engulfing him in their embrace; then suddenly it was Ethel that embraced him – alas, only in his dreams.
Slumber had not yet come to many of the guests and family bedrooms. In her bed Lady Jane lay awake and thought starry-eyed, not of marriage but of weddings; thirty feet away in the bachelors’ tower Walter Marshall tossed and turned, calling himself every kind of a fool and remembering the touch of Jane’s lips. The Duke and Duchess were each in their dressing-rooms, contemplating an unfamiliar night of connubial bliss. Lord Arthur dwelt with satisfaction on the future so carefully organised for himself. In her chamber the Honourable Honoria Hartham, clad in decorous white satin, awaited the arrival of her new lover. And at two o’clock, the door of Prince von Herzenberg’s chamber opened and he began to creep stealthily along the corridor.
Chapter Six
In the fastnesses of her room, Edith Hankey, half roused from sleep by the sound of the bell, rolled over again in her bed, thankful that her days of answering such summonses were past. It was not unusual for the night bell to ring in the women servants’ corridor on the first floor, nor for it to ring so persistently. What was unusual, however, was the scream that ensued when the unfortunate housemaid arrived at the source of the summons.
It did not, from the second-fl
oor guest rooms, permeate to Mrs Hankey, but Auguste Didier, in his tiny room above, and the twenty occupants of that corridor sat bolt upright in their celibate beds. By osmosis their alarm spread to the first floor, and thence to Mrs Hankey, who became gradually conscious that something unusual was afoot. In less chaste beds in the main house occupants hovered uncertainly. The social code did not provide for this eventuality.
Ethel was the first present on the scene. What she saw made her white to her lips and, for the second time in ten days, Mrs Hankey was greeted by a peremptory summons, this one delivered amidst the sobs of an underhousemaid.
‘It’s that Mrs Hartham – she’s – looking funny—’
Mrs Hankey rose without a word, donned her decent woollen dressing gown, seized her ipecacuanha and the nux vomica and hurried up the women’s backstairs. On reaching the second storey she collided with Auguste who had investigated the source of the noise and found his Ethel white-faced but bravely coping with an obviously dying Mrs Hartham, and was on the quickest route back to seek Ernest Hobbs.
‘Mr Didier, what are you doing on the women’s stairs, might I enquire?’
‘There is no time for such nonsenses, Mrs Hankey. It is, I think, the same as Mr Greeves – the doctor must be fetched. His Grace is being notified.’ He brushed by her with no more ado.
Undecided for the moment whether to defend the inviolacy of the women’s stairs, but impressed by his face as well as his words that something was indeed amiss, Mrs Hankey let him pass. Stockbery Towers was not yet advanced enough to have invested in a telephone, and thus the groom was once more summoned to take the brougham to the village for Dr Parkes.
‘Oh my Gawd,’ said Mrs Hankey, as for the second time in ten days she was faced by a near corpse. Mrs Hartham lay half on her bed, half on the floor, surrounded by vomit. Her girlish face was contorted into a grimace of surprise as if in protest that her life, for which she had not ordained this end, should have played this cruel trick on her.
Mrs Hankey approached her cautiously and lifted one arm. ‘She’s going to die,’ she whispered flatly to Ethel who, now that responsibility had been taken from her hands, was weeping quietly. Mrs Hankey’s main thought was not sorrow for a woman she did not know even by sight, but by the certain knowledge that this did not bode well for Stockbery Towers, and with the good of Stockbery Towers she identified herself completely.
Ethel was weeping for Mrs Hartham. A woman she’d seen yesterday, laughing and smelling deliciously, wearing a pale blue satin dress with real rosebuds down its side and long blue gloves to match, and satin slippers, slippers that would dance no more.
They could hear footsteps now: the ponderous ones of Hobbs, conscious of his position as steward; further off a pattering. Like little mice the lower servants were gathering at the door to the main house, determined not to miss what seemed likely to be an exciting event. Doors were cautiously opening across the way. Up the staircase from the first floor came the Duke, regally clad in a dark red Paisley silk dressing gown, followed by his Duchess, irritated beyond measure that she was obliged to reveal herself en déshabille, which, as it was her husband she was spending the night with, was by no means as elegant as it might have been in other circumstances.
His Grace was faced by Mrs Hankey at the door of the closed room.
‘What the devil’s going on?’ he grunted furiously. ‘Mrs Hartham not well? What’s everyone rushing around for? It’s the middle of the night, dammit.’
Mrs Hankey adopted suitably low tones. ‘Took, sir.’
‘Took?’ The Duke looked blank. ‘Ill, you mean?’
‘Dying, I fear, sir.’
The Duke gave a muffled exclamation, his face grew red and he pushed Mrs Hankey unceremoniously out of the way. Her Grace, her mind working speedily and mindful of the proprieties, pressed in quickly after him. Mrs Hankey’s lips closed in a tight line. She could hardly order His Grace out, but all the same . . . Visions of Mrs Hartham lying there – well, at least she was decently covered, but in her nightdress!
The Duke stopped still, as he took in the scene. ‘Honoria,’ he said in a strangled voice. He crossed over to her, and bent over her, his face white. Then he looked at the bedside table. His hand went out towards a plate of sandwiches lying on it.
‘Sir, I don’t think,’ faltered Ethel, ‘you should do that.’
The Duchess looked round, taking in her presence. Then: ‘The girl’s right, George. Leave her as she is. The police will want to . . .’ Her voice was unusually gentle. It was Honoria lying there convulsed in agony, Honoria, her greatest friend, with whom she’d shared so many secrets, so many confidences. Yet at the moment it might have been a stranger. Her concern was for her husband. She was the stronger of the two, and now he would need her.
‘Police?’
‘Well, George, it might not have been an accident.’
The Duke straightened up and turned to look at his wife. A look passed between them. Then he buried his head on her shoulder and, turning, she led him out of the room.
Dr Parkes’ examination was brief. By the time he arrived Honoria Hartham was dead. He had seen those symptoms in the same house ten days before, the contorted body, the agonised face. His face was grim as he stood up, the effort making him gasp a little. His Grace having left the scene, the doctor was obliged to make do with Hobbs, who speedily organised the dispatch of groom and donkey cart to the village to rouse Sergeant Bladon.
Then the doctor took Mrs Hankey back into the room. ‘Now, my good woman,’ he said.
She glared at him. She had never liked Dr Parkes.
‘These sandwiches.’ He pointed to the plate of wafer-thin sandwiches. ‘When were they made?’
‘Naturally,’ she said haughtily, ‘they would’ve been fresh made, just before the poor lady came to bed. When she asked for them. Naturally.’
He took the matter no further; that was for the police. It seemed clear enough that one of them had been the means of another speedy death. Save for the water flask and glass by the lady’s bed, there was nothing else by which poison could have been administered.
When Sergeant Bladon arrived, Mrs Hankey felt on safer ground. She had his measure. PC Perkins was posted on the door, a job less to his liking than before. Before, he was amongst his own kind and had the occasional glimpse of Miss Gubbins to sustain him; now he was standing on thick carpet, staring at a window that looked out across the roof of the ballroom; along the corridor there were doors with gold-painted handles, and painted decorations which opened and shut, disgorging occupants like his mum’s treasured weatherhouse she’d won at a fair. Feminine draperies, the like of which PC Perkins had never seen before, floated by. Blushing, he kept his eyes on the floor. It had not been so when he arrived. There, to his delight, had been Miss Gubbins and though he tried to avert his eyes he could not help noticing she was wearing night attire under a thick blue dressing gown, with her hair down in plaits like it used to be when they played in the hayfields all those years ago. To his impotent fury that Frenchie fellow had his arm on, if not around, her possessive-like and was leading her back to the servants’ wing. It quite took his mind off what was going on in there.
In there Sergeant Bladon and Dr Parkes were doing their best to quell Mrs Hankey, with His Grace standing grimly by, dressed now and determined to stay. He saw it as his duty. Honoria had been a guest under his roof – quite apart from other considerations. Bladon was writing laborious notes, watched with eagle eye by Mrs Hankey. He walked around to examine the plate of sandwiches several times.
‘It was in those sandwiches, of course,’ Parkes remarked gravely and importantly. ‘You’ll need to find out who made them.’
Bladon was annoyed. He cast a look at the doctor who had crossed his path more than once. He played golf with Naseby, and that was enough for Bladon. They had satisfactorily proved how Mrs Hartham could have poisoned the brandy, and it was galling to find the lady had escaped the consequences of this revelation to which B
ladon had devoted so much time.
‘This ’ere water jug,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Poison – if that is how the lady passed over – get in that, could it?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘She could not have taken that much of the poison to kill her so quickly in water without noticing the taste. It could not so have killed her. Unless she chose to take it, of course.’ Bladon looked up quickly. ‘No, it had to be the sandwiches.’
Bladon obstinately bent down to examine the glass. ‘’Ere,’ he said in excitement. ‘Come and look at this. That’s not water in that glass, it it?’
The remnants of a pale liquid lurked round the bottom. The doctor sniffed it cautiously. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s not water.’
Bladon was triumphant.
‘It’s wine, or champagne, perhaps,’ continued Parkes.
Dampened, the sergeant looked around. ‘No bottles here,’ he grunted.
‘Probably brought it with her from the ballroom,’ offered the Duke.
Mrs Hankey looked as scathing as she dared. ‘Not in the glass, Your Grace,’ she said. ‘That’s a night drinking glass.’
His Grace thought over the implications. He scowled. So there was somebody with her, he was right, dammit. And he knew who it was. The minx. Saying she was tired. Now what was he to do? If that Prince fellow poisoned Honoria he’d blast him with his own Purdey. Yet how could he let Honoria down by speaking out. She still had a reputation, dammit. No, Laetitia was worth ten of her . . .
It was a short night. By the time Mrs Hankey reached her bed again, the housemaids were already up and stirring, yawning even more than was their wont. Ethel had not slept, and found it easier to rise with them than to exercise her prerogative and take that extra half-hour. Better to be busy than to think again of that white convulsed face, and turn her mind to pleasanter things such as how kind Mr Didier had been, how he’d understood how she felt about Mrs Hartham, how he had put his arm round her to comfort her – when they were out of sight of everyone, of course – and kissed her; he didn’t seem to mind that her hair was all down and she was in the ugly old dressing gown. It wasn’t his usual kind of kiss at all . . . He’d only kissed her like that once before, when on that never to be forgotten day he had taken her to London to the matinee of Mr Irving, and then to the Savoy to meet Mr Escoffier and they’d come home quite late, so that it was quite dark as they walked up from Hollingham Halt . . . quite dark.
