So Much For Buckingham: The Camilla Randall Mysteries #5

by Anne R. Allen

  Could Plantagenet have got himself involved in some sordid fling? The Daily Mail certainly hinted at it.

  Maybe Plant hadn't returned any of my calls because he was ashamed he was cheating on his new husband.

  No. That made no sense.

  For one thing, Plant usually waited until the third or fourth date before he got physically involved. He was very holier-than-thou about that.

  Besides, he had been in London two nights ago, when the accident, or whatever it was, happened at the Old Vic. He couldn't have been out of London for more than a day. Not much time to fall so deeply in love with somebody from Doncaster that he'd want to murder him.

  I tiptoed out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I wanted to dress quickly and get myself to the store without waking Peter. I didn't want to interact with him until I knew exactly how I felt about last night.

  But it was too late.

  Buckingham gave a loud meow from the living room, where he'd been banished to avoid the threesome he seemed to have in mind. He scratched loudly at the bedroom door. The shower must have alerted him that the keeper of the can-opener was awake.

  Peter rolled over and opened his eyes.

  "You do look lovely in a towel, Ms. Randall," he said. "But you must be chilly. Do come back to bed."

  He sat up and reached for me.

  His chest had developed some awfully nice muscles from whatever he did on that Australian ship. Or maybe the Tasmanian prison.

  "I can't. I need to get into my clothes, scarf down some breakfast and get over to the store. It's after nine. I'm usually in my office by now."

  I chose a top and slacks from my closet and dug in my dresser for clean undies.

  Just as I grabbed a bra and dropped the towel, I heard somebody knock on the front door. With considerable force.

  "Damn." I madly tried to hook the bra. "I have no idea who that is. Jen isn't due until noon. I hope it's not a customer. Or a Tudor-hating reviewer."

  "No worries." Peter grabbed his jeans from the floor. "I'll see who it is and make sure it's not a monster from the Amazon jungle."

  I didn't particularly want to announce to the world that I was sleeping with my formerly dead publisher, but the stupid bra hooks would not fasten and Peter was already out the door, zipping his fly.

  I could hear the shirtless Peter greeting somebody in a rather formal tone of voice. Double damn.

  I prayed it wasn't a customer.

  A moment later I recognized the voice. Marva.

  No. Not Marva. Marvin. He sounded agitated.

  I finally managed to hook the bra and scramble into my clothes.

  "Marvin," I said, rushing into the front room in my bare feet. "What's wrong?" Marvin wore some sort of yoga pants with a pilled gray sweatshirt and not a trace of make-up. Maybe he'd been in the middle of a workout when he decided to come over.

  "Thank god you have somebody here with you, Camilla." Marvin grabbed me in a warmer than usual hug. "Mr. Stygar has introduced himself. Don't bother to apologize for getting over Ronzo so quickly. I'm proud of you." He delivered the last remark in a loud stage whisper.

  "Who's Ronzo?" Peter said.

  "Can I make you all some coffee?" I did not want to have to explain Ronzo to Peter at this point. "Have a seat at the table. I'm running late. I need to get to the store."

  I put water in the Mr. Coffee and some heaping scoops of French Roast. I required heavy caffeinating this morning.

  "So do tell me what brings you here on a Monday morning, Marvin?"

  "To apologize, of course," Marvin said. "And to tell you it wasn't me. I only just found out." He sat heavily on a Chippendale dining chair. "I hope you can forgive me."

  "Is this about Plantagenet Smith?" Peter politely took the chair from the living room desk and moved it to the dining table rather than take the other of the two dining chairs. For a criminal who looked like a rough fisherman, Peter certainly could be a gentleman.

  "Oh, no," Marvin said. "Plant can be snarky, and he does hate Camilla's ex-husband, but he'd never do anything like this. No. This is the work of... I don't know. It must be a very skilled hacker."

  "Her ex-husband? Jonathan Kahn, the newsman?" Peter gave a rough laugh. "I thought he was on a permanent bender somewhere in Southeast Asia."

  I wondered how Peter knew so much about my ex. I generally avoided talking about him. The Manners Doctor considered it rude to talk about exes with a current significant other.

  Marvin nodded and rolled his eyes.

  I managed to go through the motions of making coffee, but my whole body felt numb. Whatever Marvin was talking about was going to be terrible. Apparently even more terrible than Plant's arrest. And anything that involved my drunken ex-husband couldn't be good. Jonathan had once used Marva/Marvin's dominatrix services, which Marva had turned into a blackmail opportunity.

  Of course that was when Jonathan still had enough money to be worth blackmailing.

  "What are you talking about, Marvin?" I tried to keep the anger from my voice, but my words sounded shrill. "What on earth does any of this have to do with Jonathan Kahn?"

  "You haven't seen it? It's all over Twitter. You haven't been online this morning, have you?"

  Peter wheeled his chair back to the desk and booted up my laptop.

  "Camilla is not a devotee of social media," Peter said. "Which is a good thing at the moment. Some review bullies and lunatic Yorkshiremen have been saying the most appalling things about her."

  I managed to pour three cups of coffee and put them on the table.

  "Where did you find the Limey?" Marva said, sotto voce. "Very nice."

  "I'm her publisher." Peter tapped away at the computer. "I'm afraid it's our fault she's in this mess." He leaned in to take a closer look at the screen and gave a yelp. "Bloody hell. Is this you, Camilla?"

  He swiveled in his chair and gave me an appraising look. He seemed about to burst into laughter.

  "Good god, woman, why didn't you ever tell me you had such a kinky side?"

  I rushed over. There on the screen, with the hashtag #KinkyDrManners was a photograph of somebody who looked a lot like me, wearing nothing but a riding hat and pearls, using a riding crop on the bare buttocks of former Fox News pundit, Jonathan Kahn.

  Suddenly the screen went blue and a message said, "Twitter is over capacity."

  Peter let out a belly laugh.

  "Dr. Manners, I think you just broke the Internet."

  Part V—There is no Creature Loves Me

  Chapter 42—Plantagenet

  Plant received no more visits from Piglet and Pooh, who seemed to be finished with him. He lay on his bed in a half-awake state for hours—maybe days—wondering if it really was inevitable that he would be charged with Neville's murder.

  How could they hold him in this nasty toilet of a room for 96 hours?

  Four days of staring at walls. How could anybody stay sane in here?

  He was kicking himself for not saying more to Sanjay about the importance of finding the young man who had been acting the part of King Richard at the Old Hall festivities.

  As soon as the police talked to that guy, the whole mix-up would be solved. The actor had seen Neville dead before Plant arrived in the Hall. He even had blood on the sleeve of his costume, probably from trying to rouse the poor man.

  Or, of course, he might be the killer.

  So why weren't they looking for him?

  He shouldn't be hard to locate. These reenactments were staged by various groups with names like "The Guild of the White Boar", and "The Companie of Mercia." He'd seen their names in the brochure. They would know who had been playing what part.

  The police ought to be looking for a murder weapon, too. They might even find a nice big knife with some incriminating DNA on it. That's what happened in mystery novels.

  Mystery novels. If only he had one. The most hackneyed cozy mystery in the world would be a welcome break from the horrible monotony in here.

  Still, he'd l
ike to tell all those authors that mysteries were not actually very cozy when you were in the middle of one. This one was frigid. How could any place be this cold in August?

  He had not been able to get warm since he arrived. The concrete of his cell seemed to exude cold, like a refrigeration unit. And the icy blue of the walls made him shiver when he looked at them too long.

  And it wasn't as if he had anything else to look at. There was a high window above his bed that let in daylight, but it was covered with some sort of opaque glass that didn't let him see any trees or sky—just a perpetual grayish fog that turned to an oily orange as night fell. Probably from security lights outside.

  He wasn't even allowed the dignity of a dark night.

  No. He wasn't going to feel sorry for himself. He needed to keep his thoughts positive.

  What would Sherlock Holmes do? Or Miss Marple?

  They would find the witness, and the murder weapon. And somebody with a motive. If it were Miss Marple, she'd find the culprit because he reminded her of somebody in her own village.

  Plant tried the mental exercise of thinking about who in his world might be likely to commit murder. He didn't have much respect for Glen, but he was pretty sure Glen would stop short of murder. Marva/Marvin, maybe. He seemed capable of anything. Especially when he was in costume. Costumes could make people behave differently. It was like being anonymous. It could bring out the worst in people

  And pretty much everybody at the Hall that day had been in costume.

  Plus they'd all been milling around. Anybody could have run up to that tower. Well, not somebody very old or unfit. It had been a slog getting up those stairs.

  He remembered the man in the puffy pants—the fee-collector at the door to the Old Hall. He would have known who had been in the building.

  Maybe Sanjay could find the puffy pants man—if Sanjay could do anything. Plant had his doubts.

  He drifted back into sleep picturing Sanjay in one of those Rumpole of the Bailey wigs. It did nothing to calm his anxieties.

  Chapter 43—Camilla

  As I looked at the awful, familiar photo, my head throbbed and my face burned.

  I whirled around and glared at Marvin.

  "How did this horrible thing get on the Internet? I thought you said all copies had been destroyed years ago!"

  Peter would not get that smirk off his face.

  "Mr. Skinner," Peter's voice was more clipped than usual. "Are you responsible for this? Did you take the photograph?"

  "No, no. It's not even Camilla in the picture. It's me." Marvin spoke in a Marva voice.

  "This is a photograph of you? The person with his trousers around his ankles?"

  "No. The other one. The one who looks like the Manners Doctor. It's me. In a wig. Before I had the implants removed. Plus I was getting the hormones then. I thought I wanted gender reassignment surgery, but I realized in time that I'm happier being a cross-dresser. It's not politically correct, but it gives me so much more flexibility, you see."

  "No. I'm not sure I do see." Peter went back to look at the photograph. "The breasts do seem to be a bit larger than Camilla's..."

  I did not need a reminder of that. Certainly not now. I wished Peter would put a shirt on. I was having way too many mixed emotions about him at the moment.

  "As a working dominatrix," Marvin said. "I like to be able to impersonate many different, powerful women, and they don't all have racks like the one that surgeon gave me."

  I felt like hitting both of them.

  "This is not about my breasts. Or Marva's. It's about my career. Which that picture has just destroyed. Marvin, how did this happen?"

  "I don't have a clue, Camilla. We destroyed all copies of that photo after the, um, issues at the Golden State Writer's Conference were resolved five years ago. I haven't seen that thing since. I suppose I might have had a copy on my old laptop, for security...but I keep that carefully guarded. It has all sorts of private information about clients...oh, god, you don't suppose it's been hacked?"

  "There's no such thing as private information in the electronic age," Peter said. He turned back to the computer. "All right. It's time to do some damage control. But it will cost us a bit. Camilla, we're going to have to do that errand at your bank."

  The cash. Peter wanted to legitimize the money he'd smuggled into the country. My choice was to have that picture destroy my career or launder money for an international criminal.

  "If there's anything I can do to help...I am so sorry this happened," Marvin said.

  "Yes there is something you can do," Peter said. "Do you still have this hat and wig? Could you make yourself up to look like this picture?"

  "Well, all but the boobies. I use falsies now."

  Peter rolled his eyes. "Just make yourself look as much like Camilla as possible, if you would, Mr. Skinner. I know some news people in the U.K. who will eat up this story." He looked at his watch. "But first, Camilla and I need to go to the bank."

  I glanced at the clock. It was nearly ten AM. "But it's time to open the store."

  "Don't you have helpers?" Peter sounded impatient now.

  "Jen doesn't come in until noon. I guess I can call and see if she'll come in early."

  While I called Jen, Peter went back to the computer.

  Jen did not sound at all glad to hear my voice.

  "I can't believe you would call me asking for a favor," Jen said. "I'm not sure I want to come in to work at all. I'm embarrassed to be working in that store. Seriously. Jen is too."

  "Please. I can explain..."

  Jen had already hung up.

  I turned to Marvin. "Because of that photo, I've lost both my employees. You need to watch the store for a while. Peter and I have some...um, banking to do."

  Chapter 44—Plantagenet

  Plantagenet woke with a stab of anxiety, aware of somebody in his cell. It still seemed to be daytime, since the light from the window was still gray—a dark gray. Maybe it was a rainy afternoon.

  "Sanjay?" he said.

  Sanjay seemed to come and go as he pleased around here. Plant fought grogginess, tried to get up, and was about to speak when he saw it wasn't Sanjay. Or Piglet and Pooh.

  It was the King Richard reenactor from the Old Hall—still dressed in medieval garb.

  The actor was a bit shorter than he, but had a regal stance. Again he portrayed the king's spinal scoliosis with dignity, not twisting his body into deformity like Spacey's Richard.

  Plant's heart pounded. This man could clear him before the whole mess went to trial. Or at least he'd be an important witness. He hoped the man owned some other clothes, however. A jury wasn't likely to believe him dressed like that.

  "I can't tell you how grateful I am...." Plant started to say.

  The young man stopped him, holding his finger to his lips.

  "We had nowt to do with it," he said, just as he had in the Old Hall. "We knew nothing of the murders of our cousins until the vile deed was done."

  "So you said," Plant managed to fight the heaviness in his limbs and get up from his bed to offer a handshake. "But I'd like to talk about what you saw in the tower at the Old Hall..."

  The man looked away and distained Plant's offered hand. Apparently he was still in character and did not want a royal hand to be touched by a common one.

  Plant kept smiling. He wanted to express how truly happy he was the man had come forward.

  "I'm so glad you've come. You could be saving my life here. Have you told the police what you saw? Did you see who killed Neville—the Duke of Buckingham? You said there was another body...there were two dukes?"

  The man said nothing and gazed up at the opaque window.

  "We kept my brother's sons in the Tower for their protection. We were dearly fond of the boys. We would never have harmed them. But many of our enemies wished them out of the way. Henry Stafford for one."

  Obviously the actor was not going to break character. This seemed a little unhinged under the circumstances, but
Plant had known some Method actors who stayed in character for months.

  He figured he should play along. He certainly didn't want to alienate the man who was his ticket out of this awful place.

  "Henry Stafford?" Plant tried to remember what he'd read in Daughter of Time about King Richard's enemies. But he couldn't remember anybody named Stafford. "Do you mean Henry Tudor?"

  "Are ye simple, man?" The actor paced the tiny cell as if he were the one in prison. "No. I mean Henry Stafford, the Second Duke of Buckingham. He plotted to kill the boys long before he conspired with that Welshman. Buckingham imagined himself in line for the throne. He was descended from Edward III, of course, but through the maternal line. It was a ridiculous claim, although a good deal more legitimate than Henry Tudor's."

  Okay. This was how it was going to go. Plant tried to think of something appropriate to say.

  "If Buckingham had the better claim, then why did he support Tudor?"

  "He didn't. Buckingham supported himself. Only himself. Always. He curried favor with us in order to wheedle us into deeding him the Bohun lands that had belonged to his grandmother."

  "Real estate? It's always about real estate, isn't it?" Plant smiled.

  Richard gave him a disapproving look. "Once he had the land, the traitorous toad no longer required our favor. That was when he set about acquiring what he craved all along: our throne. Who was in his way? Our royal self and two beloved nephews. That's why he bribed that scurvy traitor, James Tyrrell."

  Tyrrell. Plant remembered that name. Shakespeare portrayed him as Richard's henchman who murdered the boys.

  "You're saying Tyrrell did kill the princes?"

  "Of course. Henry was too weak to do such a thing. But Tyrrell killed the children at Buckingham's order, not ours."

  "Why?" Plant and wished the actor would finish up with his game so they could talk about Neville's murder.

  "Buckingham wanted to stir up rebellion against us so he could usurp the throne. It is the only way he could rally the aristocracy —by doing such a heinous thing and putting the blame on us. We had been making the nobles prosperous, so they had no reason to fight. Stafford wanted the boys gone because they had better claim than his. Even after the boys were declared illegitimate, they were a barrier to him. But they were no threat to us."