Too Many Notes, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘That is true,’ I put in.

  ‘Except this … man. When he emerged from behind a sofa he … saw there was nothing to be afraid of and … went round drinking from glasses. Drinking them down. While everyone’s backs were turned.’ His voice took on the warmth of contempt. ‘As if the King stints on wine for his guests.’

  When this had sunk in I stood up in great agitation and went up close to him.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Whose glass did he drink from?’

  He was supremely frosty at my effrontery.

  ‘Several. I really couldn’t tell you which.’

  Like other bishops I could name he was very stupid.

  ‘Where were the glasses?’

  He sighed at my pertinacity.

  ‘Oh, on the fireplace. The small table nearby. On the piano.’

  ‘There was a full glass of claret which the King had given to the Princess Victoria. It would have been on the table near the fireplace, I think. Did he drink that?’

  At last I had got through to him. His jaw dropped.

  ‘I know he drank one very full glass of red wine … Oh, my Gawd!’

  There was silence in the room. Mr Nussey stirred by my side. Finally he spoke.

  ‘You realise that this has not happened, Mr Mozart.’

  I wheeled round on him.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘This has not happened. Murder does not take place in a royal household. I shall sign the death certificate as heart failure. What else was it?’

  I grew red and spluttered. For once my duty was plain for me to see.

  ‘Mr Nussey, I cannot allow this business to be hushed up.’

  He tried to outstare me. He was a man, clearly, who had got where he was by fawning on the great, not by taking a strong moral line.

  ‘You have no choice, sir. You have no medical knowledge, I take it, to contradict my own? I tell you again, murder has not taken place. Think of the King’s popularity, the general pleasure his geniality arouses in his subjects. Think of the effect of a murder in his own royal home!’ He added, quite unconscious of the bathos, ‘My own position would be jeopardised for ever.’

  I said with more confidence than I felt, ‘Your position will be jeopardised still more, Mr Nussey, if you try to hide the fact that someone has attempted to murder the heir to the throne. The King and Queen are both extremely fond of the little Princess.’

  ‘The King and Queen need know nothing.’

  ‘What if another attempt is made, perhaps successfully made, and the details of this one emerge? Then the King would find out that you covered up the fact that Popper died of poison, and that you did it to protect your position in the Royal Household.’

  I could see that he was wavering. I pressed home my advantage.

  ‘Quite apart from the fact that, while I may not be able to contradict you on medical matters, I do have privileged access to the King himself.’

  He gaped, hardly flatteringly.

  ‘You?’

  I turned to the footman.

  ‘Perhaps you will confirm that.’

  The Bishop looked as if he were being confronted by a ranting dissenter.

  ‘It … seems so. Apparently.’

  I turned back to Mr Nussey, and addressed him with the utmost seriousness.

  ‘The matter on which the King has consulted me is not unrelated to – to this.’ I waved my hand in the direction of the bed, which I preferred not to look at, though I was conscious that Mrs Hattersley was at that moment busy arranging the corpse. ‘That being so, I have to inform the King. I would suggest that your best course is to accompany me when I tell him what has happened, so that we can all three discuss what is to be done.’

  ‘Discuss it with the King? In person?’

  He had brightened up immediately. In fact his face, anywhere else but in a death chamber, would have presented a richly comic spectacle. I suspected that his position in the Royal Household was provider of placebos for chambermaids, and if he had been at the death of the King’s predecessor it was as holder of the ninth slop-pail. But it was good that I now had him on my side. I turned to the attendant Bishop.

  ‘The room where I was very graciously received in private by the King on my first visit here – is it likely to be free at the moment?’

  ‘So far as I know … sir.’

  ‘Very well. Be so good as to take Mr Nussey there, and stay on duty at the door to prevent intruders. I will go and, if it is possible, fetch the King.’

  I was made to feel my want of polish: one does not ‘fetch’ a king. But after a moment his eyebrow was lowered and he turned and led the way. We left Mrs Hattersley in charge (looking balefully at me, to say that she’d warned me) and proceeded in silence down the marathon stretch of corridors and stairs, until we separated and I went back to the rooms that abutted on to the terrace. The King, the Queen and the hardier souls were still outside, and I followed them out. The King was surrounded by a little group of visitors to the castle, and the open air was encouraging him to talk even louder than usual.

  ‘M’brother Ernest’s trouble’s never been women. Better if it had been. Natural. His trouble is he’s the damnedest old reactionary who ever drew breath, and he thinks he can do what he likes and nobody has a right to criticise. Doesn’t do these days, eh? Democratic times. Well, he’ll have Hanover when I go. They don’t have queens in Hanover, and it’s their loss. Damn fool idea – look at the great queens we’ve had: Elizabeth, and that other one, Anne. We’ll have another one soon, mark my words. I lived in Hanover when I was not much more than a boy. Nasty hole of a place. Send Ernest there and he’ll be perfectly at home. Place is full of damned reactionaries just like himself. Suit him down to the ground. Ah, Mr Mozart.’

  I had joined myself on the group and had been sending signals that passed him by.

  ‘I wonder, Your Majesty, if I might have a private word …’

  He nodded, with a touch of endearing self-importance.

  ‘Ah, business, business. Just when I was enjoying m’self.’ But he jogged over to me and let me lead him towards the door, back into the castle, and towards the study. Active as I am, I puffed a little in his wake, and was able to get a few words in.

  ‘Something very extraordinary, very unfortunate has come up, sir, and we felt we couldn’t act without express orders from Your Majesty,’ I managed to say at last. ‘Ah, here we are.’ We went past the footman, his eye fixed on eternity, and I introduced him to the nervous man standing by the table and fiddling with his coat buttons. ‘Mr Nussey, Your Majesty – one of the court apothecaries.’

  Mr Nussey bowed exceptionally low.

  ‘Not too much of the scraping, eh, Mr Nussey?’ said the King deflatingly. ‘I’m a plain man. If you can invent a cure for my asthma I’d be obliged to you, but otherwise I’m healthy enough. I’d be healthier out at sea, but it wouldn’t do for m’ministers to have to come out in a bum boat every time they wanted an audience, eh?’

  He sat down, and graciously gestured to us to do likewise. ‘Now, what is it, eh? Eh?’

  I told him in a low voice and quite unemotionally the events of the last half-hour, starting with Mr Popper’s exit from the Crimson Drawing Room, his death from presumed poisoning. (‘That’s unheard of, b’God!’) and going on to the revelation that he had helped himself to the wine in other people’s glasses, including the Princess Victoria’s. (‘But I helped the little thing to that m’self.’) If there were signs that the King would have favoured a straight cover-up if it had been only Mr Popper in question, the news that it was possibly the Princess Victoria who was the intended victim altered his attitude completely. When I had finished my exposition he sat back in his chair cogitating – slowly, but not without result. His question when it came was a cogent one.

  ‘Who could conceivably investigate this?’ I saw the point at once, but he went on, ‘The local magistrates? Bow Street runners? The idea is
ridiculous. They’d be so overawed by everyone here – most of them with a handle to their names, a prime minister, Royal Family – they’d be too busy scraping and minding their Ps and Qs to get to the bottom of anything. I tell you what they’d do, Mr Mozart: they’d fix on one of you theatre people, because they wouldn’t have to scrape to them. Probably be you, eh? Eh?’

  ‘Probably, Your Majesty. Mr Popper himself was accustomed to blame me for pretty much everything that went wrong. The fact that I am a foreigner would probably convince any normal investigator that I was guilty.’

  ‘Foreigner? Nonsense. You’re a true blue Englishman, I can see that.’ Ugh. ‘But we’ve got to do better than that. Got to get to the bottom of it and stop it. Lovely little girl – hope of the nation and all that. If it’s a feller we’ll send him into a room with a revolver. If it’s a woman – don’t know what we’ll do. Pity we don’t have nunneries. Very useful things, nunneries, if you had a wrong-‘un to put away … If the Duchess gets wind of this she’ll take the Princess away quick as lightning.’

  ‘Would that be such a bad thing, Your Majesty?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then we might never get to the bottom of the thing. Think of it: all the people who came with her would be out of reach of questioning.’

  ‘But surely the people from Kensington Palace would not wait till they came to Windsor Castle before trying to kill her? They’d have much better opportunities at home.’

  ‘But if they tried to kill her at home they’d be the first to be suspected. Here they’d be the last.’ The King saw the expression on my face, and immediately responded – quietly, without trace of having taken offence. ‘Ha, Mr Mozart! So you’ve put me down as a silly old buffer who hasn’t an idea in his head, have you? You’re not the only one. Well, I may ramble on a bit and say things I shouldn’t, but I can think things through if I have to. I tell you what, a modem king doesn’t have to be too clever, or he’ll find his position intolerable – all power in theory, none in practice, that’s what he has. But he shouldn’t be too stupid either, or he’ll find the politicians walking over him. And I tell you, Mr Mozart, I may not be a great brain, but I am not stupid.’

  I hastily began, ‘I assure you, Your Majesty—’

  He waved his hand.

  ‘Pooh, pooh! I’m not offended. You’re not a scraper, Mr Mozart. That’s why I took to you at once. You speak your mind, or let it show on your face. Well, now you know I can think, let me think this through. Some kind of poison, you say—’

  ‘Possibly digitalis, Your Majesty,’ put in Mr Nussey, the first words he had dared say since the discussion began. King William nodded, as if we were discussing different blends of tea.

  ‘So, since no one could have known I was going to press the Princess to have a glass of wine, it must have been put in – if it was her glass – between my handing it to her and the silly fool drinking it down … The thing is: who? Now, you’ll do the investigation, of course Mr Mozart.’

  ‘But, Your Majesty—!’

  He stopped my protests with a gesture.

  ‘Obvious person. Long history of services. Kept m’brother Ernest out of the newspapers and the courts for once in his life – not that he deserved it, damn’fool that he is, or thanked you for it either, knowing him. Then there was that business at the Queen’s Theatre.’

  ‘But Your Majesty, I thought—’

  ‘That it was all hushed up? So it was. But Lady Hertford told m’brother the King – last bid to keep her hold on him. Didn’t work. But he told me years later. Nice work. Very loyal. So what we do is: Mr – er – Nussey signs the certificate.’ He turned in his direction. ‘Very grateful to you. Won’t forget it. Call you in if the other chappies are sick. Just tell people there’s been a sudden unfortunate death from – from what? Eh?’

  ‘Heart, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Heart. Safe that. Always heart at the end, eh? I’ll set a footman the particular task of guarding the Princess Victoria. And you, Mr Mozart, have the rest of the Princess’s visit to find out who wishes her harm.’

  Without telling anybody that any harm has been intended her, or that anyone has died an unnatural death. King William had the regal habit of demanding the impossible and assuming it would be done for him. In the most gracious manner, of course.

  9. Past and Present

  I found it very difficult to go back and mingle with the assembled company as if nothing had happened. The King didn’t find it difficult at all. He bustled in on his guests and within minutes I heard him telling details of the indiscretions of one of the old Queen’s ladies-in-waiting to a couple I was convinced were the lady in question’s daughter and son-in-law. A technique was evolving for dealing with the King’s spectacular faux pas. You kept quiet while they were being committed and got together with other victims later to compare notes. Though affection for the new King was undimmed, there was a feeling that for one whose life had been a series of more or less comic indiscretions, he had an unconscionable relish for the follies of others.

  The company had thinned out a little: the actors had gone back to London, and I looked in vain for the scamp who had attached himself to the Princess Sophia. I was filled with an uneasy sense of needing to make a start, without any idea of how to proceed. Really the King had presented me with an impossible task. Seeing that the Duchess of Kent was leafing through fashionable journals by the fireside I decided to begin my investigations with her: she had been, after all, on the alert about the well-being of her daughter even before the events of the afternoon. Those events should be clear in her mind. She greeted my approach with every appearance of pleasure.

  ‘Mr Mozart! You have been talking to the King?’

  ‘I have, Ma’am,’ I said, bowing, and accepting the seat she gestured to. ‘The King takes a serious view of the … disturbance this afternoon.’

  ‘I vould hope he does!’ said the Duchess, understandably.

  ‘Of course. And he has taken various measures as a consequence. A footman will, unobtrusively, always be close to the Princess Victoria for the rest of her stay here, and a letter has been sent to the Duke of Cumberland threatening him with arrest if he comes within the vicinity of the castle again during her visit.’

  The Duchess nodded, but not too happily.

  ‘I am sadly confused as to vether I should stay on. I shall never be anything but extremely uneasy here. There is bad blood in that family, Mr Mozart.’

  ‘There is certainly something about the Duke of Cumberland that makes one uneasy,’ I admitted.

  ‘And you have cause to know, Mr Mozart,’ she said graciously.

  ‘I have cause to know,’ I agreed. ‘It is not something I can speak about.’

  ‘I respect your discretion. There have, however, been rumours in the family … Of course it may be that Sir John is right: in such a public place no harm vould be attempted. And the fact that the Duke is the most hated man in England may also be a sort of protection. But then he is mad! Who but a madman vould do what he did today?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ I echoed. Though I had reason to believe that the Duke was in fact most unpleasantly sane. I added, ‘I think I must have had a presentiment of what he was going to do.’

  ‘Really?’ said the Duchess, as interested in such superstitious nonsense as any washerwoman or any actor would be.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, simulating a rapt recall of the situation. ‘I remember turning away from the company just before the first shot rang out and noting with particular sharpness what was happening around the Princess. Of course I regard her – if I may say so without presumption – in the light of a charge.’

  ‘And I am very glad that you do, and very grateful for your promptness ven you heard the shots.’

  ‘Nothing but my duty – and, at my age, nothing like so fast as Your Royal Highness.’ We gave rather comic little bows at each other, and then I resumed. ‘No, I remember so vividly that the Princess had been talking to the Duke of Wellington – a
delightful picture they made together! The Duke then went off to talk to you: he joined the group you made with Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne.’

  ‘He came vith empty compliments about Victoria,’ said the Duchess sourly. The Hero of Waterloo cut no ice with her, and she did not even seem pleased with compliments to her daughter.

  ‘And the Princess was then joined by the King and Queen, and he pressed her to take a glass of wine.’

  ‘Have you ever heard such foolishness?’ asked the Duchess indignantly. ‘I should have gone over then.’

  ‘She sipped it, and he turned away. I have it there on my mind, like a posed picture – a formal painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence, perhaps. The Queen was still beside the Princess when the shots rang out. The figures around the table and the sofa are much more blurred, however.’

  ‘George FitzClarence was there,’ the Duchess said promptly. ‘I know that because if he had tried to talk to Victoria I vould have gone over at once.’

  ‘Was he with anyone, or on his own?’

  ‘He vas talking to … oh dear, who vas it? His vife is not here: she is in an interesting condition, as the FitzClarences alvays seem to be. Trying to make up in number vot they lack in legitimacy … I think it vas Lady Courtney, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The FitzClarences alvays hang around the Queen, you notice, as if they’re trying to claim her as their mother.’

  ‘And yet they don’t always seem properly respectful of her,’ I pointed out.

  ‘There you are, you see: divided, confused, mad!’

  ‘I seem to remember that some of the theatre people were close by too.’

  ‘That little man like a turkey-cock. The manager, I believe? And young George Cambridge vas making himself ridiculous vith that actress – how such things run in the family! But I can’t remember vether they vere close or not.’

  The Duchess was now claimed by the Queen, and I was glad because if we had gone on with the conversation much longer she would surely have wanted to know why I was so interested in who was near the Princess. I had not got very far, but it did occur to me that the person to ask might be the Princess herself. I slipped up to my room, where a fire had been lit (it was a room not totally inconspicuous and removed from the ‘good’society staying at the castle – very different treatment from my last experience of staying with royalty), and at the little desk-cum-toilet table I penned the following note: