Lord Foxbridge Butts In
Page 4
I spent the first hours of the ball spreading myself liberally among the débutantes, signing myself onto a different girl’s card for each dance, even picking a few wallflowers out of the deep corners, taking them for strolls along the terrace afterward and being vacuously charming to their parents and chaperones when I returned them to their perches. I went in to supper with Lady Caroline Chatroy, the glamorous daughter of the Duke of Buckland and a veteran ball-goer in her third Season, who kept me reduced to helpless giggles with her wittily vicious estimations of our fellow guests; toward the end of the night, I was able to surround myself with the company of my own sex in the card room, where I joined a very chatty game of poker that lasted until the wee hours and increased my wealth by seventy-eight pounds and five shillings.
The sky was that lovely pearlescent gray that comes before rosy-fingered dawn peeks over the trees in the Park when I left Paxton House and strolled back home, and the hotel was only just beginning to stir to life with tired-looking houseboys sweeping the carpets and swabbing the marble steps. When I got to my room, I found a plate of sandwiches under a silver dome, a very thoughtful gesture on Pond’s part, which I ate while wriggling out of my stale clothes and kicking my shoes across the room. I looked out the window to see if Count Gryzynsky was up yet, knowing him to be an early riser; but though his curtains appeared to be open, the windows were closed and dark.
Stretching out on my stomach across my turned-down bed, I pulled my diary out of the bedside table and jotted down my memories of the day, a habit I’d gotten into at Eton and still kept up out of custom, and to which I frequently refer as I pen these little reminiscences.
The entry was mostly a bare list of the things I’d done that day and the names of people I’d met, but also a couple of things that other people had said (including several of Lady Caroline’s barbed mots) and descriptions of interesting things I’d seen. I also wrote an explicit account of my morning with the Count, which served to get me rather worked up, necessitating a trip to the bathroom before I could sleep (where a more virtuous boy would have had a cold shower, but I had what in Cockney rhyming-slang is called an ‘Arthur,’ after famed industrialist J. Arthur Rank). And so, as Pepys used to say, to bed.
*****
It was still technically morning when I got up the next day, but only just; I had that lovely drowsy feeling that one gets after being up all night and sleeping late the next day, and I lolled on the sheets for a good long while before Pond came in with my coffee and my breakfast, which I learned he’d had to cook himself in the little pantry in the passage, since the kitchens stopped serving breakfast some hours earlier. I repaid this favor by praising his eggs to Heaven and making pretty compliments to his toast — and I wasn’t just being fulsome, he was an excellent hand at bacon and eggs.
When I finished eating, I slid out of bed and into my dressing-gown, and strolled around my rooms with my coffee and cigarette; I noticed a number of favorite old bibelots from my Oxford rooms had been unpacked and scattered about with that artistic negligence that makes a room so cozy — I also noticed a number of new silver and china ‘articles of domestic use’ here and there, stamp-boxes and match-cases and suchlike, and began to dread the bill from Asprey.
When my perambulations took me close to the windows, I glanced across at Count Gryzynsky’s windows again, which had become something of a habit ever since that first day when I saw him leap naked across the room. The sun was shining straight down into the courtyard, so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust sufficiently to see if the Count was at home or not.
I uttered a vivid oath and dropped my coffee cup when I saw the body hanging from the ceiling. It looked like the Count, had the same build and the same curly dark hair, but it was facing away from me so I held out hope that it might not be him, it might be some other unfortunate who’d taken the room after the Count checked out, in order to end it all in pleasant surroundings — if the Count had checked out, which I did not know.
“Pond!” I called out in some panic, “POND!!”
“My lord?” he came running in a moment later, struggling into his black jacket.
“Get the manager, there’s been a suicide across the way,” I pointed dramatically out the window, which drew Pond across the room to see what I was pointing at.
“Godalmighty!” he gasped, shocked out of his professional reserve, but then slipped back into it with a “Very disturbing, my lord. I shall alert Mr. Delagardie.”
He dashed off, and I tore my eyes away from the gruesome spectacle long enough to throw myself into some clothes, which turned out to be the tennis whites Pond had laid out when I told him that Lady Caroline had invited me for lunch and lawn-tennis at Buckland House that afternoon. I was hopping into my shoes as I made my way down the gallery and up the half-flight to the corridor of the front block of the house, where a number of porters and bellboys led by Mr. Delagardie were clustered around a door with a brass number three on it.
“Count Gryzynsky?” Mr. Delagardie called out while pounding on the door; when that got no results, he pulled out his pass-key and unlocked the door; it would not open, however, appearing to have been bolted or barricaded on the other side. For no reason I could fathom, the distressed manager turned to me and wailed, “What are we to do?”
“Is there any other way into the room?” I asked, “A communicating door with the next room?”
“No, my lord, this is the only way in,” Delagardie was close to tears.
“No, it isn’t,” I remembered the Count clambering across to my room the morning before; I went down to the gallery, the entire entourage following me like the children of Hamelin, and opened the window onto the little wrought-iron balcony closest to the wall. With a great deal more trepidation than the dancer had displayed, I shakily hoisted myself up onto the rail and edged toward the corner, where it took me three tries to get a leg up onto the decorative ledge; once there, though, I was able to pull myself up with my fingers in the spaces between the bricks, and slowly inched my way to the nearest window of the Count’s room. It was latched, but not bolted, and it only required a healthy shove (which nearly threw me off the ledge) to gain access.
Scrambling into the room, I came to a stop right behind the body hanging from the light-fixture in the ceiling. It was definitely a corpse, and not a practical joke as I’d briefly hoped. It was wearing a white cotton nightshirt that fell to the knees, which struck me as odd — the Count didn’t seem the nightshirt-wearing type.
The rope was a common-enough piece of jute as used by carters and builders, looped over the small chandelier and tied off on the leg of the bed. A chair lay on its side beneath the dangling feet, and another was shoved under the handle of the door, which had been bolted and reinforced with the edge of the wardrobe pushed up against it. It was like one of those illustrations in a detective magazine where the reader is invited to find something wrong in the picture. Very odd.
Moving around to the front, I looked up into the corpse’s face, but it was swollen and purple and curtained with loosely curling dark hair. It might very well be the Count, but there was still room for doubt, and for hope. I did not pretend that I was in love with the Count, wasn’t even sure I really liked him; but I couldn’t bear the idea of someone I knew so intimately being so dead.
After making a quick inspection to see if anything else was unusual or out of place, I went over to the door and pulled the wardrobe out of the way (which took a bit of doing, it was so heavy), and drew the bolt to let the rest of the delegation into the room. Delagardie tottered in his tracks and looked ready to faint; the staff clustered around him with a variety of gasps and oaths, and Pond gaped with horror at the grimy soot and brick-dust smeared across the front of my white sweater and flannels.
One of the bellboys knelt down by the bed to untie the rope, in view of bringing the body into a more dignified and comfort-able position; but another cautioned him not to touch anything, as the police were likely to ask about it.
“Perhaps not,” I thought immediately of Twister: I didn’t think he’d be allowed to investigate the death alone, and I imagined he was too honourable to countenance a cover-up; but he would know how to handle his colleagues with tact, and would hopefully assist in screening the true nature of the hotel’s carefully selected clientele. I reached for the telephone but realized it might have incriminating fingerprints on it, so begged the hotel staff to stand guard outside the room while Pond and I returned to my rooms to communicate with Scotland Yard.
I got Twister’s card out of my note-case and sat down at the desk in the sitting room, dialing the number myself rather than waiting for the exchange. After many clickings and misdirections, I was finally connected.
“Detective Sergeant Paget, here,” his voice sounded so efficient and authoritative that I relaxed immediately.
“Twister? It’s Foxy Saint-Clair, I met you with Bunny Vavasor at Brooks’s the other day?”
“Of course, Lord Foxbridge, I remember you. What can I do for your lordship?”
“Um, well,” I was taken very much aback by the distant formality; but then I realized that there must be other people in the room listening to his end of the conversation, “There’s been a spot of trouble here at my hotel, I was hoping you could step around to assist and advise.”
“Has a crime been committed, Lord Foxbridge?” he inquired in a slightly bored voice. I could almost hear him rolling his eyes at his colleagues.
“I’m not sure,” I snapped a little, annoyed, “I was hoping you could tell me. It’s rather too delicate to discuss on the telephone. Can you come ‘round?”
“I’m happy to assist, my lord. I can be there in a few minutes. What is the address?”
I told him and he rang off abruptly, leaving me staring at the instrument for a stunned moment before returning the receiver to its cradle — whereupon Pond became quite terse with me about my besmirched tennis whites, and more or less forced me to change into a proper suit and phone to Lady Caroline with my regrets for not being able to attend luncheon after all. It was just like having a nanny again, except that Pond was much more subtle than Nanny had been, making his orders sound like gentle reminders of things I would have thought of by myself if I hadn’t been so upset.
Once I was dressed, I went down to the foyer to wait for Twister. Though the night porter was manning the desk at midday, and bellboys were thin on the ground, it appeared that nobody knew about the hanging, yet.
“Oh, thank God you’ve come,” I ran out to meet Twister when I saw him come in sight of the hotel.
“What’s going on, Foxy?” he stopped and took hold of my elbow, “What’s the mystery?”
“Well, it looks like a suicide, but there’s something odd about it,” I explained, “and there are some, shall we say, exceptional circumstances involved.”
“What is this place?” he leaned back to take in the pomp and majesty of the neoclassical facade, “I didn’t know there was a hotel here.”
“Very few people know about this hotel,” I lowered my voice, as we were still outdoors, and jerked my head toward the steps to indicated that we ought to go inside, “It’s very exclusive, if you know what I mean.”
“The Connaught is exclusive, too, but I’ve heard of it,” Twister followed me into the foyer and through the arch to the stairs.
“It’s a gay hotel,” I explained once we were indoors.
“It doesn’t look very gay, I’d call it quite stodgy” he said, looking about at the clubby appointments until he finally noticed the common theme of the paintings, “Oh, you mean that kind of gay. It’s a hotel for queers.”
“Exactly, so you can imagine that many of the guests would be rather upset by a visit from the police. There are diplomats and respected businessmen staying here, not to mention me. I hoped you could advise us on how to proceed.”
“I’m amazed that such a place exists,” Twister looked around himself as we ascended the second flight of stairs to Count Gryzynsky’s room, “But I haven’t heard so much as a whisper that anyone at the Yard is aware of it; if the guests are as respectable as all that, and the waiters aren’t suspiciously camp, there should be no danger of a detective coming to suspect that everyone here is queer. And if your suicide really is a suicide, well — queers hang themselves all the time, nobody would think a thing of it.”
“You talk like you’re not one of us,” I said to him, somewhat perturbed by his blasé attitude.
“As far as the Yard knows, I’m not,” he said in a very superior warning tone that I did not like one bit. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t notice as we’d arrived at the room and he was examining the scene from the doorway.
I followed him into the room when he entered, my curiosity about what he’d make of it overriding my pique at his sneering caution. I was fascinated to watch the way he looked at things, as if taking photographs with his eyes: he would look at a thing, concentrate on it, blink, and then move on. He made a circuit of the room, closely examining the clean empty ashtrays and the spotless water-glass on the bedside table, with me on his heels like a faithful Watson.
“Do you know who the poor chap is?” Twister stood reverently in front of the body and looked into its face.
“This room belongs to Count Gryzynsky,” I told him, “A famous dancer, you may have heard of him.”
“No,” Twister continued to run his eyes over the corpse, concentrating and blinking, “But you seem to be unsure if this is him.”
“Well, the face is so disfigured,” I offered as an excuse.
“Did this Count have any other distinguishing marks or features that you’re aware of?” Twister was staring closely at the hands.
“Um, I can’t think of one?” I knew of one very distinguishing feature, but I did not think it polite to mention in mixed company.
“You’re a terrible liar,” he turned those photographic eyes on me, “Out with it.”
“Well, he’s sort of a nudist,” I temporized, “My rooms are across the courtyard, so I’ve seen into this room, er, on occasion. And there was something, um, unusual...”
“Would you care to take a look and tell me if this unusual feature is present?” he asked impatiently.
I gulped and stared at him in shock. Me? Examine a corpse’s underpinnings? I was not so delicate that a hanging body sent me into fainting hysterics, but there seemed something ghastly about invading a dead man’s privacy in that fashion. Nevertheless, I swallowed my disgust and stepped over to the body, leaning down to look under the white shirt.
It was most definitely not the Count. I was deeply relieved, which Twister could see plainly on my face.
“What is your relationship with this Count Gryzynsky?” he eyed me suspiciously.
“We are acquainted, as one is with one’s fellow guests,” I tried to hide my lie in a display of pompous indignation.
“I see,” he said, and his tone implied he actually did see — saw right through my lie and could recite the exact number and order of sins I committed with the Count the day before, “But we are still left with a puzzle: who is this poor bugger?”
“Not a clue,” I admitted, turning back to the corpse of the unknown man who looked so much like the Count, but had been so much less richly endowed, “A brother, perhaps?”
“Mr. Delegardie,” Twister went back into the hall and addressed the manager, his notepad at the ready, “Did Count Gryzynsky share this room with someone?”
“No, of course not,” Delagardie looked shocked by the question, and went rather sniffy when he replied, “The Count sometimes entertained friends in his room, but gentlemen do not share accommodations here.”
“Have you seen this man before?” Twister pursued. “Has he visited here before, perhaps with Count Gryzynsky?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the manager answered ters
ely, and received agreement from the porters and bellboys behind him, “If it is not the Count, he is not known to any of us.”
“Well, I’m jiggered,” he tucked his pencil behind his ear in a very odd but endearing gesture, “I would have said this was a straightforward suicide, but people don’t barricade themselves into strangers’ rooms to kill themselves. And there’s no note. I’m going to have to bring in the Yard. My chief will be very interested in this.”
“Please, Sergeant, I beg of you,” Delagardie dropped his dudgeon and took on a supplicating posture, “No uniformed officers, please! This is a respectable house, I cannot have constables on the premises. It would ruin us.”
“I am sorry, sir,” Twister pulled the door shut behind him and locked it with the key that had been on the inside of the door, “But where suspicious death goes, constables must follow. We’ll do our best to be discreet, but we must do our duty. If you will be so kind as to go about your business, I will return shortly. Don’t let anybody leave until I return.”
“But my guests! I cannot prevent them from going out.”
“You’ll have to, I’m afraid. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
I walked Twister out, since I had invited him, “I hope it was all right that I called you,”
“I rather wish you hadn’t,” he admitted a little too readily, “I’ll get no end of chaffing for all that milording I had to do on the phone. It’s hard enough on the force with my background, it won’t do me any good with the lads if it’s known I pal around with the old nobility.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, with genuine contrition, “I didn’t think of that. I only reached out to someone whose honour I knew could be counted on.”
“Is this your way of wearing me down, Foxy?” he turned at the bottom of the front steps and looked up at me with a wry smile, “Awful lot of trouble to go hanging corpses about the place just for a chance to flirt with a copper.”
“You’re worth a little extra effort,” I grinned at him and watched him walk off down the street.