by Jack Treby
‘It’s all right. I didn’t like him either. So when I heard the bang, on Friday evening?’
‘She’d had a bit to drink. There were a few tears. She got up to refill her glass and she tripped up. Banged her head on the bedstead. Simple as that.’
‘And that was all it was?’
Lettie nodded. ‘Course. Why, what did you think had happened?’
‘I thought...I thought someone had given her a good hiding,’ I admitted sheepishly. ‘Actually, I thought there was a man in her room.’ I had obviously got the wrong end of the stick right from the start.
Lettie laughed. ‘You’ve got a filthy mind!’ She pushed my shoulder playfully. ‘No, it was nothing like that. Mind you, she’d already taken a shine to your mate Harry. That was why she was in such a state. She knew she couldn’t flirt with him while Sinclair was watching her. It was like her father was in the room. Anyway, he’d invited her out for a drive on Saturday morning and she wasn’t sure if she should accept.’
‘A drive? With Harry?’
‘Yes. Nice drive out into the country. I told her to go for it. You only live once. If she’s going to be chained to some poxy minor royal for the rest of her life, she might as well have a bit of fun first.’
‘So she went off with Harry on Saturday morning? In my car?’
‘Oh, was it yours? Nice set of wheels you got there. Yes, they went off together. You didn’t really think she had a headache, did you?
That damned American. The insolence of the fellow. It wasn’t enough to seduce the twenty-one year old daughter of a former cabinet minister, he had to do it in my Morris Oxford. If he had damaged the upholstery, I would swing for him...
‘I think she must have slipped down the back stairs with her maid and met up with him outside. Ducked down in the back of your car and off they went into Aylesbury for a few hours. And good luck to them, I say.’
Aylesbury. That didn’t sound terribly romantic. And it wasn’t a particularly long drive, either. It was clearly more of a ‘getting-to-know-you’ trip than a ‘really-getting-to-know-you’ trip. Harry had shown remarkable restraint, by his standards. He had waited until after dark before making his final move. The fellow was a romantic at heart. I smiled quietly at the thought, but my good humour was cut short. Mrs Smith was tripping up the banisters behind us.
‘Do you have to block the whole of the stairs?’ she muttered angrily.
‘We don’t have to, love,’ Lettie replied, pushing herself back against the window, ‘we just thought it would be a good laugh.’
Mrs Smith glared at the two of us as she squeezed past. ‘I would expect this of her,’ she grumbled, ‘but I thought rather better of you, Sir Hilary.’ Having made her disapproval abundantly clear, she disappeared up onto the landing.
‘Toffee nosed cow,’ said Lettie, not bothering to keep her voice low.
I laughed. ‘Miss Young, you’re unbelievable.’
She grinned, placing a hand on my arm to steady herself as she pulled herself upright from the window. ‘Call me Lettie.’
‘Very well, “Lettie”.’
She looked away for a moment. ‘You’re all right, you are.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean I’m not really “a stuck-up prig who wouldn’t know a good time if it smacked me in the face”?’
‘Oh you’re that too.’ She grinned. ‘But I’m not fussy. Shame you’re married really. I could quite fancy you.’
I coughed in surprise. ‘This is hardly the time or place for flirting.’
‘There’s never a right time, lover boy.’ Her eyes were mocking me now. She leaned in close, to prevent anyone overhearing. ‘You never been tempted to stray?’
The unexpected line of questioning had me flustered. ‘I...have, once or twice,’ I admitted, speaking more honestly than I had intended. ‘But not...with girls,’ I added.
‘Oh.’ Lettie blinked. ‘Blimey.’
I’m not quite sure why I chose to confide in her at that moment. Harry had always assumed that I was a closet homosexual and I doubted the idea would come as a surprise to Lettie, even if it wasn’t exactly true. ‘You’re not shocked?’ I asked her.
‘Gawd, no. Get all sorts in the theatre. You just don’t look the type.’
If only she knew the truth, I thought. But it was flattering to know that she liked me. Perhaps her taste in men wasn’t quite as vulgar as I had first supposed.
‘Come on, let’s go and see how Miss Jones is getting on.’
Lady Fanny Leon had a private suite in the south east of the house. I knocked gingerly on the door. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing here now. A five minute conversation with Lettie had answered more questions than I had managed to figure out for myself in the last thirty-six hours. I doubted there was much more Felicity Mandeville Jones could tell me. Except perhaps why somebody might want to murder her. That might be worth another few minutes of my time, I supposed, before I finally leapt into the Morris Oxford and made my escape.
A maidservant answered the door. She was a plain thing with a helpful face set against a dowdy grey dress. At sight of us, she gave a quick bob. ‘May I help you?’
‘Yes. I was wondering if we might have a word with Miss Jones,’ I said. ‘I gather from the Colonel that Lady Fanny has been looking after her.’
‘She’s not here, sir,’ the maid replied. ‘Miss Jones, I mean. Begging your pardon, sir. She went back to her room five minutes ago.’
‘She ain’t on her own, is she?’ Lettie asked, with some concern. It would be madness for the girl to be left unsupervised with a murderer on the loose.
‘No, miss. Her maid was with her. The Colonel said she wasn’t to be left on her own.’
‘Quite right,’ I agreed. ‘How is Lady Fanny coping with it all?’ I peered past the maid, through the doorway, but there was no sign of our hostess. Not that I had a particularly good view.
The maid glanced back nervously. ‘She’s a bit shaken, sir. We all are. This is a quiet house. Nothing like this has ever happened here before. She says the Colonel wants it all covered up.’
‘Probably for the best,’ I agreed. ‘We don’t want any gossip. You understand?’
‘Yes, sir. Of course. Sir Vincent made that very clear to all the servants.’
I nodded. ‘Good girl!’
‘Daisy! Come here!’ Lady Fanny was calling from the depths of the bedroom.
The maid jumped. ‘Yes, miss!’ She bobbed her head at us again, apologetically. ‘I’ve got to go. Lady Fanny’s getting ready for church.’ The door closed quickly, before we had the chance to reply.
I pulled out my fob watch. ‘What time did they say the service was?’
Lettie couldn’t remember. ‘Half past ten? Not for ages yet, anyway. Why, you thinking of going?’
‘Hardly. I’m not exactly the church going type.’
Lettie took my arm again. ‘You and me neither,’ she agreed.
We made our way back along the lower landing and reached the steps leading up towards my room. Mary Smith was heading in the opposite direction, along the upper hallway, having doubtless ascertained that her bedroom had not been inappropriately ransacked by the servants during their recent search. Her scandalized look when she saw Lettie and I arriving arm in arm at the top of the stairs forced the adoption of an innocent expression on both our faces, at least until she had passed us by. This time, the “toffee-nosed cow” refrained from comment as she descended the stairs.
We continued along the upper landing and came to a halt outside one of the bedrooms at the far end. This was the room that now belonged to Felicity Mandeville Jones.
I took a deep breath and knocked.
It had been a strange twenty-four hours for the young debutante. Goodness knows how she was coping with it all. The poor girl had gone for a drive with a man she barely knew, been dragged into a row with a prominent journalist, surrendered her virtue in a night of ill-advised passion with a dubious American, before finally being suspected of murder. And now
it appeared she was a possible target for assassination. Her weekend away had been almost as disastrous as my own. Perhaps the joy of her first sexual encounter had mitigated the horror of events somewhat, but I doubted it. Even with a seasoned professional like Harry, it was bound to have been a little bit clumsy. It was her first time, after all.
There was no reply to the knock on the door. Lettie and I exchanged worried glances. I couldn’t quite bring myself to enter Miss Jones’ boudoir uninvited, but Lettie had no such qualms. She grabbed the handle of the door and pushed inside.
I followed behind apprehensively.
The room was empty. There was no sign of Felicity Mandeville Jones or her maid.
Chapter Seventeen
The bedroom was in a state of some disarray. The sheets were scattered across the bed, untouched since before breakfast, and there were two crystal glasses on the bedside table, with the dregs of whatever Harry and Felicity Mandeville Jones had been drinking. That was careless, I thought, to leave it in full view like that for the servants to see. Ordinarily a chamber maid would have been in here by now to change the sheets and clean the room, but with most of the staff away for the weekend the handful of remaining servants were having a difficult job coping. The valets and ladies maids considered changing sheets to be beneath their dignity and the valets in any case had been far too busy searching the rooms to even think about tidying them up.
I strode across to the window. ‘Where did she go?’ I wondered aloud, gazing out across the lawn to the steeple of St Mary’s church in the middle distance. ‘She didn’t pass us on the landing.’
‘She must have slipped down the back stairs,’ Lettie suggested, coming over to stand next to me by the window. ‘Like she did yesterday morning.’ The servants had their own set of stairs running down the back of the house. The footmen and chamber maids could clomp up and down there all day without disturbing the guests.
‘Stupid girl,’ I muttered. ‘She shouldn’t go wandering off on her own.’ I glanced across at Lettie. ‘I suppose we’d better find out where she’s got to.’
‘You don’t think she’s scarpered?’
‘Lord, I hope not. But why the devil would she?’
Lettie gave a face. ‘Wouldn’t you, if you thought someone might be trying to blow your head off?’
‘I suppose so.’ There was always a chance the murderer might have a second go. I looked back at the dishevelled bed and noticed a small bottle of sleeping pills lying on the bedside table next to the decanter. Perhaps they belonged to Dottie. A dribble of wine was left in the glass decanter, but not much. This was not Harry’s usual tipple but he was always prepared to make concessions if it served his ends. ‘Back stairs, then, I suppose?’
Lettie nodded. ‘Back stairs.’ We headed for the door.
I hoped to goodness Miss Jones was still in the house, and hadn’t made a break for Bletchley rail station. It wouldn’t look good if she’d fled a murder scene, especially if she were to blab about anything that had happened here. I growled. This was all we needed. I had enough problems of my own, without worrying about some silly girl taking fright. No, that was not fair. Lettie was right. The Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones had good reason to be afraid.
We closed the bedroom door and Lettie directed me along the hallway. There was another, shorter corridor at the far end, off to the right. This led to Mr and Mrs Smiths’ bedroom and I was half tempted to stick my head inside to see what the married couple had been so worried about the Colonel’s search uncovering. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time. Actually, I needed to visit the bathroom too, but there wasn’t time for that, either.
The back stairs were rather less impressive than the ones at the front of the house. There were no grand archways or heavily decorated marble pillars in this part of the mansion, just a narrow wooden staircase with a functional banister painted a dull beige. It is often the way. No matter how grand the house, the servants’ quarters are always painfully utilitarian.
The bottom of the stairs led through to the servants hall, not far from the bathroom I had used to clean myself up the night before. A door off to the right led to an alcove intersecting the ballroom and the billiard hall. Lettie was ahead of me. She swept into the billiard room, but I saw a flicker of movement the other way.
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said.
Lettie glanced back. I gestured to her and she moved across to take a look.
Felicity Mandeville Jones was standing over by the window in the far corner of the ballroom, her body enfolded in the protective embrace of a rather large American. Harry Latimer had his back to us and the couple were stood silently together, Felicity with her eyes screwed shut, sobbing gently. The two of them had not seen us arrive.
Lettie and I exchanged looks.
For some people, it would have been a shocking sight, an unmarried man and a young girl locked together like that. Anthony Sinclair had certainly been shocked; enraged even. But this was not some illicit assignation, as it had been the night before. There was no money riding on the outcome of this event. It was simply one human being giving comfort to another. I would never have believed Harry capable of it. He had already won his wager and had nothing to gain from this. But he had nothing to lose either and even my American friend would not refuse comfort to a damsel in distress. This was one of those rare moments when I did admire Harry Latimer.
Felicity Mandeville Jones had bolted from her room, dismissed her maid and sought comfort in the arms of her new lover. She had been given firm instructions to remain with Lady Fanny Leon, but it was understandable that she would feel the need to seek out Harry Latimer. The American could provide the kind of reassurance that nobody else would. It was still something of a risk, however, to be caught in such a firm embrace, when anyone might walk in and jump to precisely the right conclusion.
I was about to clear my throat and announce our presence, but Lettie caught my eye and shook her head. Let them be, she seemed to say, without actually voicing the words. I nodded. Nothing untoward was happening here and Felicity Mandeville Jones deserved her moment of consolation.
It had been a trying night for everyone.
My man Hargreaves was hovering on the upper landing as I returned to the first floor via the back stairs. My bladder felt like it was about to burst and the guest facilities on the south side were much more comfortable than anything the servants quarters had to offer. Hargreaves had seen me, however, and scurried over to accost me before my hand had even reached the handle of the WC. ‘Sir, may I have a word?’
I waved him away with my hands. ‘Not now, man. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ My bladder was on the point of rupturing.
‘It is important, sir.’
I sighed. If Hargreaves was finding the nerve to insist, it probably was important. Nature would have to wait. ‘Oh very well.’ I gestured along the corridor.
We were not far from my bedroom. I pulled out the key from my pocket but was irritated to find the door was already open. The servants had been searching, of course, but they might have locked up after themselves. ‘Well, what is it?’ I said, passing through. ‘This had better be important, Hargreaves.’
The valet followed me inside. ‘Perhaps if we could close the door, sir?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ But I could see the fellow was in earnest. ‘Very well.’
I let him close the door and we moved towards the bed. I had tidied the bed sheets myself but there was no sign of any other cleaning up. The chambermaids had not been near the place, even if the valets had. I sat down on the bed and crossed my legs tightly. There was a suitcase over by the wardrobe. Hargreaves had done as I’d instructed and packed everything neatly away. The servants had probably searched the case since then, but they had at least locked it up. Shame they hadn’t bothered to be so conscientious with the door.
Hargreaves was hovering awkwardly.
‘Well, what is it, man?’
The valet swallowed hard. His hands were shaking.
It really was something important. ‘It’s about...the dining room table, sir.’
I grunted. ‘Yes, what about it?’
Hargreaves took a deep breath. ‘The Colonel said that that was where they discovered Mr Sinclair’s body. Underneath the table, sir.’
‘Yes, I know. I was there.’ I glared at the manservant. His face was as white as a sheet. And all at once I understood.
Hargreaves and I had crept into the dining room together, a couple of hours before breakfast. We had tip-toed in quietly, at my behest, and had taken a quick look underneath that very table. My valet could sometimes be a bit dense, and damnably obsequious too, but he wasn’t a fool. He could put two and two together. And now that he had heard about Sinclair, he had done just that.
Hargreaves was beginning to stutter. It was painful to watch. ‘I...I was wondering, sir...if...if...’
I closed my eyes. There was no point in denying it. I had been meaning to tell him anyway. If Hargreaves was to help me escape from Bletchley Park it was better he knew the facts. And if he had guessed the truth on his own, there was no harm in confirming it. At least I knew I could count on his discretion, though it was still rather galling, having to confess such a crime to an employee.
‘There was an accident,’ I said, as matter-of-factly as I could manage. ‘Sinclair and I had a bit of an argument. He overheard my conversation with Doctor Lefranc and was threatening to expose me.’
‘I see.’
‘So then I accused him – wrongly, as it turns out – of having an extra-marital relationship with Felicity Mandeville Jones. He blew his top and there was a bit of a fight.’
‘I thought you looked a little dishevelled, sir, yesterday evening. And that cut on your lip...’
I brought a hand up to my mouth. It was barely noticeable. I had checked in the mirror. But that was exactly the kind of thing Hargreaves would notice. ‘Very observant.’
‘And you...hit Mr Sinclair with the poker, sir?’
‘I was just trying to hurt him. I wasn’t trying to kill the fellow. He fell against one of those wooden pillars. Banged his head. And that was that.’ Hargreaves nodded. ‘It was an accident,’ I insisted. ‘Could have happened to anyone.’