God Save the Queen!

by Dorothy Cannell

  “What do you mean?” Flora and Miss Doffit asked the question one on top of the other.

  “Persuading that boy, Boris Smith, that him and his pal was the cause of Hutchins’s death. I kept the note, the one where Hutchins wrote he’d been locked in, and used it after I found out Sir Henry still hadn’t come to his senses and was thinking he’d will Gossinger to you, Flora. Now, even you can see as how I couldn’t let that happen, so I sought out Boris, nothing to that, what with him being related to Lady Gossinger. And I moved in with him and his gran so I could be ready at any given moment to turn the screws, so as to get him to help me with the rest of my plan.”

  “And what was that?” Flora extended a hand in the hope that Nolly would jump up and let her pet him, but was deterred from any further attempt at movement when Mr. Tipp moved the gun a shade closer.

  “At first I thought I could get away without having to go through all the work of getting you boxed up and put alongside Hutchins.” Mr. Tipp shook his head, possibly at his own naiveté. “My idea was for Boris Smith to ferret out something what would make you look bad in Sir Henry’s eyes and cause him to change his mind. It wasn’t like I was worried about making people suspicious about two deaths in a row, because it was clear to me they’d think it was Lady Gossinger who was at the back of them. And I wasn’t all that bothered about that, because she wasn’t Family, in the real sense. And like lots of folks I always thought Sir Henry should have looked higher for a mate.”

  “This is all very interesting,” said Miss Doffit. “At my age one doesn’t expect this much excitement in a year, let alone one day.”

  “I wasn’t really clear how I was going to proceed,” Mr. Tipp informed her, “not until Flora here and Mr. Vivian Gossinger came to tea with Mrs. Smith the other day. I got Boris to fill me in afterward about everything what was said—all about how you wrote to the Queen, Flora, asking about whatever that stamp of approval thing is for Hutchins’s silver polish and how you hadn’t got an answer. The bit about you being jealous of Hutchins’s fondness for Her Majesty when you was little. And then to top it all off, when I sent Boris down here yesterday to see what more he could find out about you, he came back and told me about Mrs. Much taking a bottle of the polish to the palace. Yes, I think that did put the cap on my arrangements, when I phoned up and said there was explosives in that bottle,” he concluded smugly.

  “Mrs. Much didn’t go in to work yesterday.”

  “No matter, it’s all the same in the end. Because when you go to shoot the Queen, there’s already all this built-up evidence—a good thing I watch thrillers on the telly. They’ll even think you got this gun from your jailbird father or one of his crooked friends.”

  “Shoot the Queen?” gasped Flora, suddenly ice cold, but rigidly determined. “You can’t make me do that. You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  “Me, too,” Miss Doffit said firmly.

  “Oh, I think I can make you.” Mr. Tipp’s smile now gave off a terrible kind of radiance. “I’ve always been painfully thin, but I’m still a remarkably tough old bird.” And with this he grabbed Flora’s arm and began yanking her toward the window, all the while keeping Miss Doffit in the eye of his gun. “There’s no need to put up such a fuss, Flora. I’ll be behind the curtain holding your arm and helping you squeeze the trigger. But yours will be the only fingerprints on it. Then afterward I’ll be forced to shoot Miss Doffit. And when the police rush in ...”

  “They’ll find your gloves in your pockets and figure it out.”

  “No, they won’t, because I’ll put them in that chest of drawers and anyone as finds them will think they’re yours. It’s lucky, isn’t it, not that it really matters, that I have very small hands, no bigger than yours now I look at them.”

  “You can’t do this.” Flora strove to speak calmly. “How can you believe the Gossinger Family to be more important than the Queen—she’s this country’s anchor! Britain could fall apart without her!”

  “What I’d like to know,” said Miss Doffit, as exclamations from the street below suggested the imminent arrival of the royal car and Mr. Tipp elbowed her aside, “in fact, I’m extremely curious to know how you got in here, when the shop door was locked.”

  “I took the spare key that Mr. Vivian Gossinger left with Mrs. Smith.”

  “That’s right, so you bloody well did!” cried out a voice from behind them. “As if it wasn’t enough that you frightened my poor Boris until he couldn’t think straight— Oh, I managed to get the lot out of him just now, and now it’s your turn to be shaking in your shoes. This is a grandmother you’re dealing with, Mr. bloody Phillips! And to think I agreed to lie and say you was a relative, because you said otherwise the neighbors might think there was hanky-panky going on! Fat chance, you little bugger!” Edna stood in the center of the room and appeared to Flora’s distorted gaze to swell until she was the height and breadth of a teeth-gnashing grizzly bear.

  “You get over here,” screeched Mr. Tipp, waving the gun wildly because it was clear even to his crazed mind that the moment could easily be lost. It would take only a second for the Queen’s car to pass safely under the sitting room window.

  “You bet I will!” Edna Smith was already lunging toward him, cracking what looked like a whip against her side. Mr. Tipp, with a flashing glance below, knew that if he were to shoot now, it would make everything meaningless. The royal car would stop short of the danger point. The gun wavered in his hand and then went off. The bullet hit the ceiling as Edna Smith, hairdresser to the core, wrapped the cord of the curling iron she had removed from her overall pocket around his throat.

  “That’s the ticket,” she rasped triumphantly when in the space of seconds she had him on the floor. Flora moved in to complete the process by smashing him over the head with one of the candlesticks from the mantel. “Never know what will come in handy, do you?” Edna sprang like a schoolgirl to her feet.

  Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Miss Doffit leaned out the window to shout for help. Seconds later, a pair of regal legs emerged from the royal car, and the voice of Her Majesty rang out, brooking no argument from bodyguards or anyone else. “Don’t anyone attempt to stop me. I’m going in! They’ve got Mummy in there! They’ve taken the Queen Mother hostage!”

  Epilogue

  “Her Majesty was wonderful,” Flora said to Vivian that evening, as he hovered over her as she lay at his insistence on the settee. “She kept everyone calm, including her security people.”

  “The hand that rocks the Empire.”

  “That’s the feeling she creates. That she’s not only the Queen, but Mother to all her subjects. She asked just the right questions, and would you believe it, Vivian, that she listened with great interest when I explained the part Grandpa’s silver polish played in all this! She asked me for one of the bottles on the window ledge and said that Gossinger’s Polish sounded absolutely right for one of her seals of approval, so long as it really did live up to my enthusiasm.”

  “That seems highly encouraging,” agreed Vivian. “It sounds to me as though you may find yourself mixing in such high circles in the future that you won’t have time for me anymore. And I really can’t say I blame you, because I wasn’t much help in all this.”

  “That’s not true,” Flora exclaimed. “You got in touch with Edna Smith to warn her about Mr. Tipp, and you asked her to pass the message along to me immediately. It was my fault you couldn’t reach me directly because I hadn’t replaced the receiver properly.”

  Vivian rubbed a hand across his brow. “When I was talking to you on the phone you were so worried that the body that had been discovered was Tipp’s. I found out just before I left Gossinger that the remains were those of an elderly homeless man. Then I remembered your telling me that Mr. Tipp’s Christian name was Philip. Which brought to mind two things: that Mrs. Smith’s lodger was supposedly named Phillips, and that Uncle Henry had never liked the man and only kept him on out of a sense of obligation. Neither did your grandfather thin
k much of Tipp. And as you said yesterday, one man’s judgment of another must sometimes be taken into serious account. But,” Vivian smiled at her, “let’s not talk any more about this. Unless you want to?”

  “No, I think I need to let it all settle for a bit. And you must still be reeling from the news that Lady Gossinger is indeed going to have a baby.”

  “Imagine how Uncle Henry is feeling! He was barely coherent when he rang just now to say the doctor had been out this afternoon to see Aunt Mabel and said she is nearly three months pregnant. You know what this means, Flora, there’s a fifty chance that I won’t get stuck with either Gossinger or the title.”

  “You really don’t mind?”

  “If what Evangeline told us is accurate, we Gossingers have been living under false pretenses for two hundred years. Anyway, I’d much rather be a self-made man.” Vivian’s grin assured her he meant every word. “Now tell me what you have planned for tomorrow.”

  “Yes!” Flora sat up and cupped her chin in her hands. “It is rather glorious to know there is going to be another day. Evangeline rang up just before you got here. She wants to repay me that money Grandpa lent her, with interest. I was surprised at how much it was. Enough for me to buy some silver, including that teapot your friend George has for sale, and start the shop the way I’d really like it. Instead of having to sell secondhand odds and ends. And Evangeline has offered to help further the education my grandfather started.”

  “Speaking of your newfound relation ...” Vivian reached for Flora’s hand. “You do realize that, from all she told us, you and I are also related.”

  “Very distantly.”

  “And what a very good thing that is,” he said, sitting beside her on the settee and raising her fingers to his lips. “I wouldn’t at all have liked to find out we were first cousins.”

  “No, that wouldn’t have done at all,” said Flora, turning a face to his that was lit, not by the glow of the fire, but by the discovery that the world was as bright and shining as the Gossinger silver after she had helped her grandfather polish it, in those magic days when she was a little girl and knew they would all live forever.

  To my son Warren,

  who also hears the sirens sing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Dr. John and Barbara White of Lincoln, for taking me to the house that became Gossinger Hall and, most of all, for their unfailing love and kindness.

  Copyright © 1997 by Dorothy Cannell

  Originally published by Bantam (ISBN 978-0553101638)

  Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.