Death Sits Down to Dinner

by Tessa Arlen

  As she waited for Pettigrew to hunt down the right shoes for her dress, Clementine made a promise to herself: she would not ask her son critical and uninformed questions about why he was messing about with aeroplanes or joining the RNAS. Her opinions got them nowhere and caused bad feelings. And in this moment of maternal insight she resolved that when she next saw Althea, she would only express interest in daughter’s future plans to explore the outer reaches of barbaric lands, even though Althea had mentioned in her last letter, causing more than a ripple of annoyance and concern on her mother’s part, that she had heard the Rift Valley was one of the most beautiful, untouched, and least spoiled places left in Africa to explore.

  I am not an accomplished woman, she thought, but hopefully I am an intuitive and sensitive one who can rise above my limited life’s experiences, and try to understand what makes my children tick. If we try to force them away from what matters to them, they will only find a way; Tricky is surely an example of that.

  “Right then, Pettigrew, I like what you’ve done with my hair.” She turned from the glass as her maid came back with her choice of shoes. “There is something so graceful about hair arranged low in the neck.”

  “Thank you, m’lady, you have the perfect shape to your head for this style. Lord Haversham is downstairs in the drawing room. He arrived a few minutes ago and Mr. White says luncheon will be ready whenever you are.” Clementine stood up like an obedient child and Pettigrew gave a twitch to her ivory silk skirt and looked her over, head on one side, mouth pursed in consideration. Clementine often felt that Pettigrew’s last-minute inspection was one of self-congratulation at having achieved the perfection of her mistress’s appearance.

  As Clementine went downstairs she hoped Harry had managed to find out something at the airfield concerning the young flying officer’s death, but she was too pleased to see him to be bothered with all that for the time being, and once White had served them and left, they settled down to enjoy their luncheon together.

  “Do we have a new cook?” Harry finished his game pie with relish.

  “Yes, we do; such delicious food. She is quite an interesting young woman, apparently. Jackson told me she cooks French provincial food and sometimes even rustic Italian food for the servants’ hall, which impresses Jackson, but not Pettigrew. And she goes by the name of Ginger, which impresses White, but not Jackson or Pettigrew.” She took a sip of wine and ate the last bite of pie; the crust was tender, the partridge, in its sauce, rich and succulent. She felt the great sense of well-being that good food and wine can bring to the moment.

  “Talking about the unimpressive,” said Harry as their plates were taken away by the footman, “I saw Tricky Tricklebank at Boodle’s yesterday. He was there as a guest of Finch-Hatton; his aunt told him he has to become a member. He was a bit subdued, poor chap—Hermione is laying down the law about him getting married, and is determined he will take over as chairman of the board for her charity.”

  White returned to offer them Queen of Pudding, and Clementine told him that she would ring if there was anything else they needed. There was something expectant in her son’s demeanor, and as soon as the butler had left the dining room he said, “How’s everything going on at Chester Square and your investigation, if it is not too outright a question?”

  His mother told him she didn’t mind his question at all, but that he should not ask it in front of his father, who had left her in London in fear that she might actually discover the identity of Sir Reginald’s murderer and cause Lord Montfort untold embarrassment.

  “So what will you do if you discover who killed Sir Reginald? Will you make a citizen’s arrest?” He was laughing now, no doubt at the thought of his mother and her housekeeper tracking down a desperate killer. Did he think this was some sort of parlor game she had invented to while away the empty hours?

  “Our investigation is going quite nicely, thank you, and I’m glad you brought it up because I have some questions for you. But as to Chester Square, I am afraid Trevor is in terrible trouble with Hermione. He has been telling her one thing and then apparently doing another and in the process losing a lot of money. Does he remind you a little bit of Teddy?”

  “Not in the slightest, Mama, Teddy was a scoundrel and complete blackguard. Tricky is a bit of a spendthrift, but a decent, well-meaning chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s scared stiff of his aunt, and who can blame him?”

  “Well, he’ll be in even greater trouble if he doesn’t toe the line. What is wrong with Jennifer Wells-Thornton? She would be a good wife for him.”

  “Because he’s desperately in love with an actress, that’s why—something to keep firmly under your hat, by the way. A well-connected and successful actress, her name is Lena Margaret Ashwell and she appears at Drury Lane all the time. You remember her, she played in Mrs. Dane’s Defence. She may come from the Liverpool docks, but she has learned to act like a lady…”

  “That doesn’t make her a lady, Harry, it just makes her an adept actress and probably one who is looking for a rich husband.” Clementine did not reveal that Tricky in marrying his actress had most certainly forfeited his position as heir to the Kingsley millions.

  “Margaret is not that kind of an actress. She is capable, with a good brain, and is a capital businesswoman. Beerbohm Tree is going to let her direct the next play at His Majesty’s Theatre at the beginning of the season, so she is probably the right sort of wife for Tricky. Jennifer is a nice enough girl but she’s such a little priss, and Trevor would make a hopeless bungle of running the charity. As it is, I think he might come out of things quite well if he has the sense to marry Margaret. She’s made pots of money and is immensely fond of Tricky.”

  Clementine said nothing, because here they differed in their thinking. It was all very well to have a friendship with an actress but it was a catastrophe to marry one. It was the sort of thing aging peers did in the late 1890s when they married eighteen-year-old chorus girls from the Gaiety Theatre, embarrassing their children and families and what was worse confusing the line of succession to an estate they were happily squandering away. She swiftly turned the subject away from what she considered Tricky’s depressing situation and at the same time firmly crossed him off her list of suspects.

  “How was your trip to Eastchurch?”

  “It was good, marred only by the aftermath of Captain Wildman-Lushington’s accident and his funeral, which also underscored the whole reason why I should be at Eastchurch in the first place. And I think Wildman-Lushington’s accident was just that, Mama, a wretched, unnecessary but coincidental accident. According to his copilot’s account, Wildman-Lushington lost control of the plane at about fifty feet up, as they were coming in to land. Landing and takeoff are always the dicey part of flying. The problem was entirely due to pilot error in the face of a new machine that has specific idiosyncrasies the poor chap simply wasn’t aware of.”

  “There could not have been any tampering to make the machine fail?”

  “Yes, I suppose there might have, but I seriously doubt it from his copilot’s description. And anyway the engine was smashed to bits.” Clementine looked away, determined not to say a word about her fears for the future of aircraft. So all she said was, “Ah well, it is a tragedy of course, but I am glad someone didn’t engineer his death, poor boy. How are things at Kingston—any more on Sopwith, and his factory?”

  “Not good. Someone has been snooping all right. Tom keeps all his designs and drawings of planes under lock and key now, but for quite a long time he didn’t. Didn’t see the need to really, all the chaps at Soppers are old pals, sharing their design ideas, their successes and failures. There was a young draftsman at the factory for a while, bright sort of chap. Stopped working for us with some story that his aunt was ill. Now we find that he was not quite who he said he was and has scarpered.” Clementine thought of the Clumsy Footman, who in Harry’s parlance had also scarpered. “Tom feels pretty stupid, as this bloke was evidently some sort of spy, and had all
the opportunity in the world to copy Tom’s designs, which are far in advance of anything out there, even French planes.” Harry explained that the only country in Europe that had concentrated time and money on developing aircraft design were the French, and that in the past ten months Tom had been working hard to improve on some of their designs. Now his innovations, especially where safety while flying at greater height and faster speed were concerned, had most likely been stolen.

  “Was he German, this young man?” Clementine asked, thinking of The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.

  “If there are red-headed Germans I suppose he might have been. He had a Scottish surname, McVitie; probably not his own. We don’t know if he was working for another government, or for a competing aircraft manufacturer, or whether we are being unreasonably suspicious. He’s simply disappeared. No sign of him at the house he was lodging in, and no one knew much about him. He was a pleasant sort of chap, friendly and hardworking.” Harry looked miserable and then added, “I know you won’t say anything, Mother. Captain Vetiver is still having the matter investigated and a good deal of what I have told you is conjecture.”

  “Let’s take our coffee in the library.” Clementine rang for White and then as they left the dining room made an effort to change the subject away from unfortunate marriages and disinherited nephews. Mindful of her determination not to carp on about her son’s dangerous love of flying, she took the time to take an interest in his soon-to-be commission for the RNAS and whether he would be stationed at Eastchurch. “Elmsford and Cynthia Bertholomew are just around the corner from you at Eastchurch, in Kings Sudbury. I know they would be delighted to give you dinner. They would be so glad of your company. I find that part of East Anglia so empty and dull.”

  “Thank you, Mama, I’ll probably take them up on it. It is pretty primitive at Eastchurch, but they have a decent cook who turns out a pretty good chop. The navy doesn’t believe in frills, and I rather like a spare life.” His eyes glistened with anticipation of his new spartan airborne life and Clementine realized that Eastchurch and the RNAS were Harry’s dream come true.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The servants at Chester Square might find Miss Kingsley’s draconian house rules intimidating, but Mrs. Jackson was not perturbed when she was informed by Martha that Miss Kingsley wanted to see her in the library. The old lady’s feudal hold on the servants’ hall might subjugate its inmates effectively, but Mrs. Jackson was exempt. She was in the house under the auspices of her employer, an independent operator bound only by the rules of service and her loyalties to the Talbot family. After her first hours in Miss Kingsley’s house she had come to the conclusion that the more repressive and stifling the rules of management, the more anxious were its staff, resulting in mistakes and chaos.

  She was wholly aware of Mr. Jenkins’s apprehension as he ushered her into the presence of the elderly and wrinkled dragon in the drawing room. A dragon whose fire had probably been extinguished long ago, in Mrs. Jackson’s view, but who gave the occasional experimental huff in the belief that it might rekindle. The old lady was sitting in a high-back wing chair with her feet on a tufted footstool, her spine erect and held at the prescribed four inches from the back of her chair. Her thin, twisted old hands, curled around the curved ends of the chair’s arms, were covered in stupendous rings and she was dressed in the fashion of the late 1800s, in a dress of her favorite shade of pink, with a tight, high collar edged with lace.

  When Mrs. Jackson came to a halt at a respectful distance before Miss Kingsley, the old lady did not speak for some moments but regarded Mrs. Jackson through hooded yellowing eyes, as if trying to decide whether or not to eat her for luncheon.

  “Don’t stand by the door, I can’t see you; come closer.”

  As Mrs. Jackson approached, Miss Kingsley put her head forward, stretching taut the wrinkled skin under her chin above the high lace collar.

  “Did you visit Kingsley House yet, Mrs. Jackson?” she asked without preamble or good morning, and Mrs. Jackson instantly knew that someone had been telling tales: Matron, or perhaps it was Macleod.

  “Yes, ma’am, last week, and with Matron’s help chose five boys for the charity evening.”

  “Well, you will have to start all over again, because four of the five have chicken pox. Matron has found some replacements for you. Unfortunately, they are a little older and have no doubt reached that unattractive stage in their physical development of being awkward and gangling, but we shall have to make do. Macleod will drive you over now.” And then as Mrs. Jackson turned as if to go, she added, “And this time you will have Matron’s full cooperation.” Aha, thought Mrs. Jackson, then it was Macleod who blabbed.

  As Mrs. Jackson left the library she found herself answering a question that had been at the back of her mind for the past couple of days. Why is it, she thought, that those who publicly practice the greatest acts of charity, whose entire lives are given over to causes and the energetic raising of the massive funds that support them, who preach reform and know no other way than to take the poor away from their perceived lives of ignorance and deprivation to show them a better and more worthy path, are often so personally dismissive of their human characteristics? Mrs. Jackson suspected that the individual boys had become no more than numbers in a ledger and her charity an arena for a helpless old woman to wield power and believe she still led a useful and active life.

  * * *

  Mrs. Jackson was met at Kingsley House by a young man who was waiting for her at the main door to the house, and who escorted her up the three flights of stairs to Matron’s parlor.

  As Matron struggled to her feet, uttering exclamations of welcome, and shepherded Mrs. Jackson to a tiny chair loaded with cushions and antimacassars, she was immediately on the alert. Somewhere in this effusive greeting, Matron was guilty of a cover-up, of striving perhaps to regain a lost alliance. Breaking off from cries of welcome, she yanked on the bell pull, and when the maid appeared she directed her to bring a tray of tea, with minute instructions as to the quantity of butter on the toasted crumpets.

  “I am afraid it’s slim pickings for the right sort of boy for the charity event, what with all this chicken pox, Mrs. Jackson. But I have six young men who will do a good job for Miss Kingsley and they are waiting for you in one of the dormitories. Now let me see about that tea…” She waded across her cramped parlor, miraculously avoiding footstools and other bric-a-brac. Opening the door, she bellowed down the corridor for the maid.

  “Drat that girl,” she said under her breath, and then, “Drat that little … I won’t be a moment, Mrs. Jackson.” And so ready was she for her heavily iced teatime cake, chocolate fingers, and brandy snaps that she lumbered off to track down the maid.

  In the few moments she had before Matron’s return, Mrs. Jackson found that she had slid her hand under the bill spike on the desk and pulled forth the little book that Matron had been toiling over so industriously on Mrs. Jackson’s last visit. She opened it at the first page and saw a column of dates from three years back followed by a column of figures in pounds: usually five, but sometimes ten and in several cases as much as twenty-five. Next to each amount was a tick to denote receipt of the sum? But what was more interesting was that the column with the ticks was headed with the initials RAC. She quickly turned to the last page of entries. Ah yes, here was the last entry, 15th November of this year, for the amount of ten pounds and a heavy-handed tick. Nothing was recorded since then.

  A few seconds later Mrs. Jackson slid the notebook into its hiding place, slipped back around the desk, and resumed her interest in the view out the window from her chair. And as she politely drank a cup of tea with Matron and listened to her breathless complaints of the outrageous laziness of young maidservants these days, she barely acknowledged the speaker, so wrapped up was she in what she had discovered.

  According to her ledger, Matron had been accepting money for at least three years from RAC, in payments twice a month that came to an astoni
shing two hundred and forty pounds a year and in the last two years sometimes as much as three hundred.

  RAC? This was undoubtedly Reginald Algernon Cholmondeley, whose portrait hung in the hall of Kingsley House next to that of Charles Kingsley, the great Victorian reformer for child labor, author of The Water-Babies, and uncle to Miss Kingsley. And Mrs. Jackson remembered that RAC had died on 30th November, the date of his next remittance to Matron for the month.

  Sitting there in Matron’s room, she felt a thrill of uneasy excitement. Why had Sir Reginald punctually paid this unpleasant woman such large amounts of money each month, when she was well compensated for her work by the charity? Blackmail usually being the basis of such monetary gifts, or some sort of service that Matron was performing for Sir Reginald in return for her twenty pounds a month, made Mrs. Jackson’s mind reel with endless, illegal possibilities. It was hard for her to concentrate on what Matron was saying as she poured tea and offered sandwiches. The parlor felt stuffy and stale and the voice of the woman before her unbearable. Mrs. Jackson stood up and said that she hadn’t much time and would like meet the young men she had come to meet, bringing Matron’s catalog of complaints against the hapless housemaids to a halt.

  She was taken to one of the boys’ dormitories to conduct her interviews, where she stood beside her designated chair and looked at the rows of beds. How old were these children when they came to Kingsley House, she wondered, three years, four? She was not a sentimentalist; she knew what kind of lives these children had led before their rescue by the charity. Any boy coming to this house after living in the Old Nichol at Bethnal Green, or the Rookeries of Shoreditch and Whitechapel, would find Kingsley House overwhelmingly luxurious: three square meals a day, hot milk at bedtime, a warm, clean, comfortable bed, and new clothes to wear and most of all the benefit of an exemplary education to equip them for the future. But what kind of life were they leading now if the woman who looked after them was not only an unpleasant bully but possibly a blackmailer? And if Matron was blackmailing Sir Reginald, then what on earth had the man been up to? She wondered if the boys she had come here to interview were part of the elite corps that formed the Chums.