God Save the Queen!

by Dorothy Cannell

  “What I am worried about,” Flora stalled two feet behind him, “is that I didn’t bring the key.”

  “It’s right here.” Vivian patted his pocket.

  “And I left my handbag upstairs. . . .”

  “Then you’ll have to forget about powdering your nose.”

  “That’s not the problem.” Flora zigzagged around a group of people in order to catch up with Vivian. “I don’t have any money for buses and I have no idea how far we are going.”

  “We are going to there and back to see how far it is,” he said breezily, tucking her arm inside his as they passed a shopkeeper adjusting the awning above his entryway. “In other words, you and I, Flora Hutchins, are going to fritter away the day seeing the sights.”

  “But I thought we were going to your flea market.”

  “So we will, but we’ll take the scenic route. Don’t you want to see Westminster and Buckingham Palace?”

  “I don’t want you to get the sack.”

  “My boss is the understanding sort.” Vivian smoothed down his hair, which kept getting blown about in the breeze. “Expects me when he sees me, that sort of attitude. Come on, he—or she—who hesitates is lost.”

  They were at a traffic light, which was green until they stepped off the curb; Flora felt a rush of exhilaration as they darted to the other side. Not only Vivian, but life itself was tugging at her, and she decided that this wasn’t the moment to look back over her shoulder. She would allow herself the next few hours to not think about anything very much. Grandpa would think that wise. He wouldn’t want me nursing my unhappiness every minute of the day, she thought, or feeling guilty for noticing that the sun is shining. And surely he would understand about Mr. Gossinger.

  “You have to stop calling me that,” Vivian said when they were sitting on the tube. “It makes me feel a hundred and five, besides which, it makes absolutely no sense after spending the night together.”

  “Would you please lower your voice.” Flora spoke out of the corner of her mouth, very much aware that the woman on the other side of her was all ears. “Anyway, I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Call me by my first name?” Now the man on the other side of Vivian was listening under cover of his newspaper.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because—”

  “Because you’ve got some silly idea that we come from different walks of life?”

  “That wouldn’t matter, at least not so much if Grandpa and I hadn’t worked for your family.” Flora got up and shook out the creases in her long skirt as the train got close to Oxford Circus. “And anyway, there’s the other complication.” She followed Vivian down the aisle.

  “Which is?”

  “That it would be like,” Flora said as the doors opened and she skipped out onto the platform, “like calling Prince Charming Charlie.”

  “I didn’t catch that.” Vivian joined her after letting an elderly woman precede him off the train.

  “Good! I mean, it doesn’t matter.” She really had to stop this giddy behavior before she made a complete idiot of herself. It was no excuse to claim that her world had been turned upside down and inside out. She had a lot to be thankful for: a place to live, the promise of friendly neighbors and even the hope of seeing dear Mrs. Bellows again, because looking at the stations listed on the chart inside the train she discovered that Ilford, where the old housekeeper now lived, was really very close.

  “All right,” Flora said as she and Vivian headed for the escalators, “I’ll stop calling you Mr. Gossinger, if that’s what you really want. But you have to promise—”

  “Not to tell Aunt Mabel and Uncle Henry?”

  “No, that you won’t feel you have to keep me under your wing after today.”

  “You think you can take care of yourself, do you?”

  Vivian glanced back over his shoulder at the press of people behind them as they rode the escalator up the exit. “Let me warn you,” he now put his hands on her shoulders and spoke into her ear, “life has a way of getting complicated in London; not so long ago I was in the area of the palace, just minding my own business, and found myself in the thick of an antiroyalist rally. Thank God my picture didn’t end up in the papers or Uncle Henry, avid monarchist that he is, would have ordered me never to darken his doors again.”

  “Yes, he and Grandpa shared that—their devotion to the Queen.”

  “Those two had quite a bit in common.” Vivian resisted the urge to again turn his head, but the feeling that someone was watching them while being careful to keep out of sight wouldn’t go away. He told himself that his imagination was playing havoc with his common sense, that he was probably reacting to nothing more than a prickling under his skin and the idea that there had been one person too many sitting behind a newspaper on the tube. Still, he had to restrain himself from gripping Flora’s shoulders protectively. “Tell me, is seeing Buckingham Palace top on your list today after we take a walk down Oxford Street?”

  “It was, but now I don’t want this to end—riding the escalator, I mean. The only time I came to London before was when Grandpa brought me up to see Father Christmas at Selfridge’s when I was five or maybe six. I remember I wore a royal blue dress with a hat to match and Grandpa had his umbrella. And the best part of that whole day,” Flora looked at the people gliding past on the other side, “was riding the magic staircases—that’s what I thought they were—and they seemed, because I was so small, to go up forever. And when we got to the top Grandpa let me go down again. Several times.”

  “Is that what you would like to do now?” Vivian asked as they stepped onto solid ground.

  And he was rewarded not only by her bewitching smile but the realization that if someone were indeed following them, that person might begin to wonder if it were he, or she, who was the one losing touch with reality while going up and down the escalators at Oxford Circus.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I’m afraid it’s not Buckingham Palace,” said Vivian when he and Flora were sitting in a crowded but scarcely up-market cafe on a side street, which had recommended itself by being the one where they had got off the bus after sight-seeing most of the afternoon.

  “It’s perfect,” she assured him, picking up her knife and fork. “I love places where you can get sausage and mash and real onion gravy.”

  “But something’s bothering you.”

  “You’ll laugh,” Flora speared a piece of sausage, “but I can’t help feeling sorry for the Queen. I don’t suppose she ever gets to eat real food in places like this that are packed full of life. And if you want to know, whilst I loved Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, I didn’t like Buckingham Palace one bit. Of course I’ve seen it on television, but that’s not the same as being there, is it? I thought it looked like a prison, with the guards there to make sure no one ever got out, rather than the other way round.”

  Vivian raised his teacup. “Here’s hoping they’ve done a good job of fixing up the inside. It’s amazing what a roll or two of carpeting will do for a place.”

  “I think we should offer a toast to Mrs. Much.”

  “That’s right, she went to work there, didn’t she? And for her sake let’s hope she doesn’t get the urge to wash the royal tapestries. Uncle Henry admitted to not being very pleased when he found out she’d given one of William Rufus out hunting in the New Forest a good rub-a-dub-dub.” Vivian chuckled.

  “Well,” Flora swallowed a forkful of mashed potatoes, grilled onions, and gravy, “I don’t suppose he was any more furious than Grandpa. Even Mr. Tipp’s eyes got big when he heard what Mrs. Much had done. In a horrid sort of way, it was lucky for her that Grandpa wasn’t around when it came time for her reference. Sir Henry always wrote them in accordance with Grandpa’s assessment, you know.” Laying down her knife and fork, Flora watched Vivian cut into his mushroom omelet. “Talking about that day when Grandpa died,” she managed to keep her voice level, “we never finished discu
ssing Boris and what it could be that has got him so disturbed. And there is something odd about that, considering you don’t expect a child to get all worked up about the death of an elderly man he didn’t even know. To be honest, I don’t know that I could blame a group of schoolboys for thinking it rather a joke, in the best macabre tradition, that a butler was found stuffed down a medieval toilet. Think how many people, grown-ups many of them, get a spooky thrill out of visiting the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. So, given the circumstances, I think you could be right about Boris having seen or heard something at Gossinger that has him thinking he might have done something to help Grandpa.”

  “And I think I may have been making a mountain out of a molehill,” said Vivian, no longer feeling inclined to finish his omelet. “For all we know, Edna Smith could have been reaching into the old excuse bag in saying that Boris has been a different boy since that visit to Gossinger, because in true grandmotherly fashion she was embarrassed by his rudeness last night. Or, if there is something else bothering the boy, it could be something as simple as his having got into trouble with his teacher.”

  “Mr. Ferncliffe. It’s easy for me to remember his name because I saw him again on the train coming up to King’s Cross. Life is full of coincidences, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” agreed Vivian. “That’s my point entirely, that whatever upset Boris, if anything did, had nothing to do with your grandfather’s death, except that it may have happened to occur on the same day.”

  “You really believe that?” Flora shifted her chair as a waitress squeezed past with a loaded tray.

  “No, I don’t.” Vivian shot her a troubled look. “I’m talking out the back of my head because I want to get off the subject and back to seeing you smile. You did put your unhappiness aside for a little while, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes!” Flora laid her hand on his without thinking for a second that doing so was again crossing that invisible line. “It’s been a day I will always remember. The sort you wrap up in tissue paper and put away in a scented drawer, so you can take it out again afterward and find it still fresh and lovely. I can’t thank you enough for Big Ben and St. Paul’s, and perhaps most of all for agreeing to sit upstairs on the buses. Whenever I thought of Grandpa today it was in a happy sort of way, remembering how he managed to turn even ordinary outings to the fishmongers, or the shoe shop and such, into exploring expeditions.”

  “I’m glad.” Vivian now covered her hand with his free one. “So how about we leave it that way with both of us having a good time?”

  “Because now that I’ve started thinking about Boris I can’t put him in a drawer,” said Flora, shaking her head. “I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be his age and have something awful on your conscience. Suppose he did know Grandpa was in dire straits and did nothing to help him? That could easily give him nightmares and make him behave badly because he’s so angry with himself that he wants to be punished, even if it’s for something else, such as being rude to his grandmother.”

  “Let’s think about this.” Vivian poured them each another cup of tea. “What if Boris slipped away from the rest of the group that afternoon? Perhaps he heard Hutchins, who had been suddenly taken ill, banging on the garderobe door in hope of summoning help.”

  “It wouldn’t have happened that way.” Flora placed her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands, the better to concentrate.

  “You don’t think your grandfather was taken ill?”

  “Of course I do. What else explains what happened, if he didn’t turn giddy or faint and bend over that ... hole and grip the sides of the seat in an attempt to steady himself? What I meant was that he would never have banged on the door, not even to let someone know he needed help. It would have been completely out of character.”

  “Flora—”

  “I know it sounds like nonsense. I’m sure it’s hard for you to understand how he was, how strongly he felt that one of the primary reasons for him being put on this earth was to serve the Gossinger Family. Grandpa’s entire working life was devoted to making sure that life flowed as smoothly as possible for Sir Henry and her Ladyship. I remember Mrs. Bellows once dropped the kettle, splashing him with boiling water, and he was much more worried about tea being late than he was about being scalded. I had to sneak the doctor into the house when Grandpa wasn’t looking. So you see it would have gone against everything he believed in to create an uproar by banging on the garderobe door,” Flora kept her head up, looking steadily into Vivian’s eyes, “even if he thought he was dying.”

  “You knew him better than anyone.”

  “Not as well as my grandmother of course, or even my mother perhaps, but they’ve both been dead such a long time, so for years it was just the two of us. And one thing I don’t want,” Flora removed her elbows from the table and turned her cup round in its saucer, “is for you to think that Sir Henry didn’t appreciate Grandpa or treat him like a person with feelings, because that just isn’t true.”

  “I won’t argue that one with you,” said Vivian. “I know for a certainty that Uncle Henry had a very high regard for your grandfather that went beyond that of an employer for someone who had worked for him a long time.”

  “And her Ladyship was also,” Flora tried hard to be fair, “sometimes very appreciative. She told me once that if I followed in Grandpa’s footsteps I might make something of myself. And I think she was truly sorry when he died.”

  Vivian didn’t know how to respond to that statement. For the last week or so, he had been torn between thinking himself a fool for even considering the possibility that Lady Gossinger might have had a hand in Hutchins’s death, and the next minute believing himself an even bigger idiot for accepting even for a moment that Hutchins’s death had been an accident. It was just too convenient that the man was removed from the scene before Uncle Henry could change his will. Surely he wasn’t the only one having suspicions.

  Vivian reached for the bill that the waitress placed on the table in passing. Uncle Henry might be an old tortoise, but he wasn’t a fool. And neither for that matter was Cousin Sophie. They had to know that the police would have looked at matters in an entirely different light had they been informed about that conversation in the tower sitting room, and that Aunt Mabel had been beside herself with rage at the prospect of Hutchins inheriting Gossinger Hall.

  “You’ve gone quiet,” commented Flora.

  “Sorry. I was thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “One thing and another.”

  Vivian wanted very much to tell her that he had come to Wishbone Street last night to fill her in on everything he knew for fact: that Sir Henry had planned to change his will and in so doing might have precipitated Hutchins’s death. He wanted to explain that he had decided to keep his mouth shut because she had looked so tired and woebegone. But only overnight.

  He had still fully intended to talk things over with her in the morning and extract a promise that she would be on her guard, because now that her grandfather was dead Uncle Henry was talking about leaving the house to Flora. Making her the one standing between her Ladyship and her hopes of queening it at Gossinger Hall after Sir Henry died. But when morning had come Vivian had backpedaled once more. What good would it do to frighten Flora? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to keep an eye on her until he could discover, among other things, if Boris Smith knew something that would confirm Aunt Mabel’s guilt?

  “Has the cat got your tongue?” Flora laughed, but her eyes were worried.

  “I’m back to thinking about the boy.” Vivian brought her face back into focus and felt his head clear.

  He had made the right decision. There was a lot he could do without sending this young woman into a panic. No, he wasn’t ready to go to the police; he didn’t have any evidence, and it wasn’t likely they would keep Aunt Mabel locked up on suspicion alone. He had another moment of acute doubt. Was he jumping to conclusions because he fancied himself some kind of firs
t-class private eye? Was he damning out of hand a woman who had never been anything but kind to him? One who, when it came right down to it, had reacted to the blow dealt her by Uncle Henry very much as any wife might have been expected to upon being told her husband was leaving the family home to the butler.

  “What about Boris?” said Flora.

  For a few seconds Vivian looked blank. “That’s right, I was back to him, wasn’t I? Okay, we’ve decided he didn’t hear Hutchins ... your grandfather pounding on the garderobe door, but we’re still left with the possibility that he did hear or see something.”

  “Such as?”

  “He might have heard a groan.”

  “I suppose so ...”

  “Or he could have peeked into the garderobe and seen your grandfather doubled over clutching at the seat.”

  “Then why didn’t Boris go for help?”

  Vivian wanted to end this. “Maybe he had no idea your grandfather was in serious trouble. If he did hear a groan he might have thought someone—one of his classmates perhaps—was playing ghost, and if he did see something he may have thought that ...”

  “That Grandpa had eaten a bad piece of fish for lunch,” Flora pressed her hands together, “or something of the sort. Yes, I can see that at the time Boris might have been more embarrassed than anything else at barging in where he wasn’t supposed to be in the first place. And that afterward he would feel afraid as well as awful. Particularly if there had been another boy, or boys, with him who might spill the beans.”

  “Yes, I can picture Boris shivering under the bedclothes at night,” agreed Vivian, “scared out of his wits that there’ll be a knock at the door followed by the tramp of policemen’s feet as they come to arrest him.”

  “Poor boy!” Flora finished the dregs of her tea. “How would it be if I got in touch with Mr. Ferncliffe to sound him out, just in case he knows something? Because if there is something worrying Boris it needs to be brought out into the open, for his sake. And I’ll admit I need to know anything there is to be learned about how Grandpa died. You see, I always believed I would be with him at the end, holding his hand and saying it was my turn to tell him a good-night story.”