Insolent pup, I thought. I was about to explode when it was made apparent to me that his words were meant for the ears of the driver. He was playacting to protect my identity. George Holdfast, no actor at all, said woodenly, “Give him a hand up, then. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault we lost our way.”
I climbed up and took a seat beside the poet. While I was recovering my breath, Pelham told me in subdued tones how Jerry Gribble’s house steward had received the news. The man was worthy of his calling, thank heavens. He had recognized the wisdom of placing the body in the gun room where one of the gamekeepers would find it. They had deposited Jerry on the floor with the revolver beside him and—a nice touch—a bristle brush in his hand for cleaning the barrel.
We barely had time to agree on how much the ladies needed to be told before the carriage drew up at the front of Desborough Hall and Amelia came running down the steps.
“What happened? Has there been an accident?”
I said as I climbed down, “Didn’t Claude Bullivant tell you, my dear?”
She spread her hands in a way that conveyed her frustration. “He was very unforthcoming. He simply informed us that you wouldn’t be here for tea and then he asked to have a bath. He hasn’t appeared for hours.”
“That’s my fault,” I admitted. “I asked him to say the minimum. My dear, we have all had a dreadful shock.”
“Someone is hurt.”
“Jerry Gribble is dead.”
She clapped her hand to her mouth.
I put a supporting arm around her and told her gently, “He shot himself, poor fellow. We abandoned our shoot when we learned the dreadful news. We’ve been to his house and paid our respects. I’m sorry, my dear.”
That was the version of events that we had decided would cause the least distress. It was broadly true, if selective with the facts. We had planned it from the highest motives.
The ladies immediately smelled a rat. As if with one mind, they devoted the rest of the evening to wheedling the entire story from us. They were clever. They cornered us separately and got the truth by question and observation. Whilst I was dressing for dinner Alix spotted some blistering on my hands from the stretcher work I’d done with the shooting stick. I didn’t admit it right out, of course, but at dinner she took particular note of the other men’s hands and they all had blisters except Bullivant and the Reverend Humphrey Paget, who had come in as usual, and was shocked at the news. I think because of the Chaplain’s presence, no one accused us of deceit, but significant looks were exchanged. By the time the ladies left the table we men were ready to tell all.
The Reverend Paget left directly after dinner. Perhaps he sensed the crackle of electricity in the air. I can tell you, the brandy did several rounds before we felt sufficiently fortified to rejoin the ladies.
CHAPTER 7
Have you ever noticed that yawning is contagious? About an hour after dinner I put my hand to my mouth and said, “Pardon me.” Soon everyone was at it, and when I suggested we send for the candles at ten o’clock there was no dissent.
You may think that the shocks and strains of the day had taken their toll. Not in my case. I am blessed with a very resilient constitution. True, my arms and legs still ached a little from the unaccustomed exercise, but I wasn’t ready to turn in. I simply wanted everyone out of the way to permit me a private conversation with Amelia Drummond. So after I had wished good night to Alix I changed into my night things, put on a dressing gown and carpet slippers and quietly returned downstairs.
As I expected, she was still in the main drawing room, going through the next day’s arrangements with Colwell, her house steward. The moment I appeared, she broke off and stepped towards me, plainly alarmed by the possibility that the hot water had not been left in my room, or some receptacle had not been emptied.
“Your Royal Highness . . . ?”
Behind her, Colwell bowed and started backing discreetly to the door.
I called to him, “Don’t go.” To Amelia I said, “With your permission, my dear.”
She fingered her necklace and tried to appear composed. “Of course, sir.”
I beckoned to Colwell. Amazing how distinguished some domestic servants manage to look behind whiskers. Dressed in a frock coat he could easily have passed for Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister. If anything, his expression was more noble than Salisbury’s. I said, “Yesterday evening when you were clearing the table you found a scrap of newspaper at the place where Miss Chimes had been seated. Is that correct?”
“Quite correct, Your Royal Highness.”
“You showed it to Lady Drummond?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And to anyone else?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you mentioned it to anyone since?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even the servants?”
“I never discuss anything with the servants except their duties, sir.”
I accepted his word with a nod. “Then I think it would be wise if you continued to keep it to yourself or, better still, forgot about it entirely.”
“I shall, sir.”
I dismissed him and turned to Amelia. “And now, my dear, if you will forgive me, I would like to put the same question to you.”
She looked at me earnestly with her deep brown eyes. “Sir, I have discussed the matter with no one except yourself.”
“Not with Jerry Gribble?”
She frowned. “No.”
“That is peculiar.” I told her what I had found in Jerry’s pocket.
Her reception of this information was just as I expected. She blinked, screwed up her face in puzzlement and said, “What on earth can it mean? Was he trying to tell us something?”
“If he was, we knew it already,” I commented. “We may not be the best brains in the land, but we didn’t need telling that today is Tuesday.”
“Perhaps the piece of paper had some other purpose. Did he mean to show that his death was linked with Queenie’s?”
“How could he, if none of us had told him about the first scrap of paper?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She reddened.
I said, “You’re quite sure you didn’t mention it to anyone else? Not even your brother?”
“I swear it, sir.”
She looked so hurt at the very suggestion that I grasped her hand and squeezed it. “My dear, I believe you.”
Her eyes glistened. “And I am sure Colwell is telling the truth. It is a mystery.” A tear started sliding down her cheek.
I felt for a handkerchief and found that I didn’t have one in the pocket of my dressing gown, so I stopped the tear with my fingertip. “Chin up. Stiff upper lip.”
She managed a wan smile. “Sir, I’m sorry.”
Sounding more and more like a page from The Girl’s Own Paper I said, “What’s done is done, and we’ve got to make the best we can of it. It’s up to us all to behave as if we don’t even know about Jerry’s death. We’ll have a full day’s sport tomorrow just as we planned.”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Her face lit up again.
I winked. “I wouldn’t object to ‘Bertie’ when we’re alone.”
I was given a smoldering look. “That’s an intimacy I hardly dare to aspire to, sir.”
Reader, how did it happen? One moment we were discussing the death of a dear friend and the next I was flirting. Hadn’t I resolved to sidestep Amelia’s charms? I am burdened with an amorous nature that undermines all my good intentions. I know better than to fight it.
“Don’t be so coy,” I chided her. “You used the name more than once in my bedroom last night,”
“True.”
“In private, I’m a man like anyone else, as you will appreciate . . . if you are so inclined.” I hoped this declaration didn’t sound too rehearsed. It had served
me well on similar campaigns.
“Oh.” She liked it. She was becoming breathless and her efforts to reinflate herself were visibly improving her charms.
Remembering Alix, I said, “But I don’t think my suite is best placed for an intimate conversation.”
“Nor mine,” she said quickly.
I hesitated. “That is a difficulty.”
“Not insurmountable . . . Bertie.” The way she spoke that word “insurmountable” syllable by syllable made it sound more suggestive than anything in the dictionary or out of it. The “Bertie” came as quite an anticlimax.
I said with a twinkle, “I believe Desborough has ninety-seven other bedrooms.”
“But wickedly cold.”
“You mean that the fires have not been lit? My dear, neither of us will notice. If we can agree on a room and both succeed in finding it in, say, an hour from now, a warm outcome is assured, I promise you.”
She blushed deeply. “Sir, you flatter me, but I am forced to tell you that tonight is inappropriate.”
“Inappropriate?”
“Impossible.”
“Ah.”
So be it, I thought philosophically. You don’t argue with a lady over dates. Perhaps I was feeling more hors de combat than I had been prepared to admit a few minutes ago.
With, I hope, good grace, I wished her a pleasant night’s sleep and returned to my room. In the corridor I fancied I heard a door open briefly and close again behind me, but I paid no heed to it. Anyone who has stayed in a strange house or hotel knows how at any hour of the night if you need to venture along the corridor somebody else will inevitably choose the same moment to walk past. Doors are repeatedly being opened a fraction and timidly closed again.
I turned off the gas, knelt briefly in prayer, dropped my dressing gown, got into bed and gave a genuine yawn. Sleep must have followed quickly.
Do you know, for the second night running, my sleep was interrupted in the small hours? I was in the middle of a stirring dream of a shoot at Sandringham. I was in splendid form, hitting everything the beaters put up. One glorious cock pheasant, a veritable screamer, flew much higher than the rest. I was supremely certain that I would bring it down. I swung the barrel and squeezed the trigger and instead of the discharge I heard a curious squeak and felt a sudden draft on my face. Then there was a muffled thud. I woke at once. The squeak had come from my door handle. The thud wasn’t a pheasant dropping from the sky, but my solid oak door being closed.
I refused to be alarmed. For one thing, the dream had left me in a state of elation. For another, I was confident that I was being visited by Amelia. It had been girlish panic that had prompted her to postpone our assignation. After going to bed she had no doubt lain awake in a lather of frustration. Finally, unable to subdue nature any longer, she had come to me, I smiled in anticipation and lay quite still.
Nothing else happened.
Presently I sat up and peered into the gloom. Sadly for my self-esteem, I had to conclude that nobody was in the room except myself. Yet well-made doors with good fittings don’t open themselves for no reason.
She has lost her nerve again, I thought.
I leapt out of bed and without even bothering with my dressing gown, crossed the floor and tried the door. The handle gave a squeak identical to the one I’d heard before. I peered out. No one was in sight, but I fancied I heard a floorboard creak nearby, around a corner. This, I decided, warranted investigation.
Pausing briefly to listen outside dear Alix’s door in case the noise had disturbed her (it hadn’t), I padded off in pursuit. I knew that Amelia’s room was not far along that adjacent corridor, and I wanted if possible to catch her before she reached it.
I swung around the corner straight into the arms, not of Amelia, but of her wretched brother Marcus. Like me, he was in his nightshirt and nothing else.
Imagine my confusion.
“What the devil . . . ?”
He had his finger to his lips. “Shh.”
I said, “Someone just opened my bedroom door.”
He said in a whisper, “Kindly keep your voice down, sir. It was I.”
I said, “Young man, you had better explain yourself at once.”
As if only just aware of the gravity of the situation, he swallowed, drew himself up and said, “Sir, I’m profoundly sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I wasn’t expecting to find you in bed.”
“Where the deuce did you expect me to be at this hour?” He didn’t reply directly. He fiddled with the cuffs of his nightshirt and mumbled something about his sister.
“What are you saying?” I demanded.
“I heard you go downstairs after the rest of us had retired. I knew Amelia was down there, and I assumed . . .”
“You assumed what?”
Before he answered, a door across the corridor opened and Claude Bullivant looked out. “Who’s there?”
I said, “Nobody. Go back to sleep.”
He closed the door again.
Marcus took the opportunity to change tack. “You’re a man of the world, sir. I regret to say that my sister has become—how shall I put this?—rather too liberal with her favors since her husband passed away. I’m afraid the shock unhinged her in this respect. As her only living relative, I don’t want her to bring discredit on herself and the family.”
I said, “What are you talking about, man? I’m the future King. Where’s the discredit in that?”
Pelham hesitated. “You misunderstand me, sir. I don’t mean to offend you. I’m perfectly content—indeed, honored—for my sister to, em . . .”
“Concede me the ultimate favor?”
“Absolutely. What distresses me is when she concedes it to any Tom, Dick or Harry who cares to pass the time of day.”
Reader, I could scarcely restrain myself from striking him. “That’s a deplorable thing for a man to say about his sister, Pelham, and I happen to know that it isn’t true. As a matter of fact, the lady was unwilling to welcome anyone to her bed tonight.”
He clicked his tongue defiantly and looked away.
His attitude didn’t impress me in the least, so I gave him the dressing-down he deserved. I told him to look me in the eye when I was addressing him. Then I told him curtly, “This prying of yours is more offensive than anything Amelia is alleged to be doing. It is underhanded, unreasonable and unhealthy. If you have a modicum of decency you’ll find yourself a mistress of your own as soon as possible and let your sister conduct her private life in the way she pleases. Now get to bed and let us all get some sleep.”
He fairly slunk away.
I felt better for having spoken my mind. Little did Amelia realize as she lay asleep that she had a champion defending her. Or was she asleep? I had not gone more than a step towards my room when I heard a short, low-pitched laugh behind me. It was female in origin and it sounded so close that I spun around expecting to see the lady standing there.
The corridor was empty.
The laugh came again, clear as anything, wanton, almost a gurgle of pleasure. That’s Amelia, I thought. That is definitely her voice and she is playing a game with me.
One of the first rules of noctambulation is to know who occupies the rooms around one. With the help of my valet, I had acquired a plan of the ladies’ rooms on the first night, now usefully committed to memory. Our hostess had her private suite up a couple of steps on the left, so I crept towards her door and listened. Teasingly, she was silent again. I gripped the handle and turned it gently. This handle was well oiled. I eased open the door and stepped inside to find myself in Amelia’s dressing room. The fire still glowed sufficiently in the grate for me to recognize the gown she had worn that evening, now hanging outside the wardrobe. A heap of white undergarments lay across an armchair and the lower half of a lady appeared to be standing guard beside them, b
ut was in reality her bustle and petticoat.
Having got thus far, I didn’t propose to leave without trying the inner door that led to the bedroom. It was ajar. Temptress, I thought. You ran in here just as I came in.
I wasn’t altogether surprised to find the bed unoccupied. My guess was that she would be hiding behind the door without a stitch of clothing on. Certain of the fair sex love to exhibit themselves in as stark and dramatic a fashion as possible. The first time I saw the French beauty, Cora Pearl, was at the Café Anglais in Paris when she was served to me on a silver platter wearing nothing but a rope of pearls and a sprig of parsley.
I said in a gravelly voice, “Come on—surprise me, then.”
Amelia was not behind the door. She was not under the bed or in the wardrobe or behind the curtains. She was not on the balcony.
I said, “You can come out, my dear. I’m stumped.” Silence.
By degrees it dawned on me that I had made a mistake. She wasn’t in her rooms. Then where the deuce was she? From where had that seductive laugh come?
I returned to the corridor and stood as near as I could estimate to the spot where I’d heard her voice. There were no obvious places to hide. Not a potted palm or a Ming vase to shelter behind.
Mystified, I waited for another sound from her. When it eventually came, it wasn’t nearly so audible. It was more of a sigh than a laugh. Helpfully, it was repeated a number of times, faint, but distinct, and the voice was definitely Amelia’s.
The sighing settled into a rhythm. I traced it to the other side of a door just across the corridor from where I was standing. The sound slowly increased in tempo and volume.
Marcus, I thought, you could be right about your sister.
I gave a sigh of my own, gritted my teeth and returned to my room.
There, I counted on my fingers. Not Holdfast; his room was at the far end of the corridor. Not Bullivant; he’d looked out of his, which was on the other side. Not the Chaplain, thank goodness; he wasn’t staying in the house. And not Marcus Pelham; he’d gone in the other direction. I was just arriving at the inevitable conclusion when my thought processes were rudely interrupted.
Bertie and the Seven Bodies Page 6
