Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  He didn’t bother with a dressing-gown—the night was warm enough—making his way towards the sitting room and its ample drinks cabinet.

  “What the hell…” It took him just a moment to realise that it was the waxen head that glared at him like some apparition from the sideboard. The moonlight gave Pierrepont’s face an ethereal luminosity; the shadows gave it a kind of sinister life.

  “Good evening, Lord Pierrepont,” Rowland said quietly, smiling at his own reaction. “I gather you too are unable to sleep.” How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, that there was a head on the sideboard?

  He poured himself a brandy and took the armchair opposite. The glassy eyes of Pierrepont’s effigy seemed to follow his every move, baleful, resentful.

  “I’m not sure what you expect me to do, old boy,” Rowland muttered flinching under the strange gaze. “It seems to me that you were determined to end badly. Someone was bound to take issue with your shenanigans eventually.”

  It was fatigue of course, but for a moment Rowland thought the head sighed.

  “I do wonder though,” Rowland went on, setting down his brandy without taking a sip, “exactly how the murderer managed to get into your rooms at that club of yours, without anyone raising an alarm. He might have used the tradesmen’s entrance, I suppose, which means he was familiar with the club…”

  Rowland sat back tapping his cast thoughtfully. For some reason, Pierrepont’s glass eyes seemed less hostile now.

  “The authorities don’t seem too interested in who killed you, do they, old boy?” Rowland pointed sternly at the head. “That’s what you get for dying in a frilly nightie. But I hear what you’re saying… perhaps I could make some enquiries on your behalf.”

  “Rowly?” Clyde stumbled into the sitting room, crashing into the couch as he came. “Are you talking to a ball of wax?”

  “Clyde… sorry… I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Were you talking to Pierrepont?” Clyde repeated the question, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think that perhaps you are losing your mind?”

  “He didn’t reply, so no.” Rowland smiled. “When he begins to talk back, by all means, have me committed.”

  “Rowly…”

  “I was just thinking out loud, Clyde.”

  Clyde stopped on the couch. “You still can’t sleep?”

  Rowland said nothing, aware that his ongoing insomnia was beginning to worry his friends.

  Clyde glanced at the glass of brandy. “I thought Wilfred told you not to drink.”

  “He said don’t drink alone,” Rowland retorted. “You’re here now… not to mention my good friend Pierrepont.”

  Clyde laughed despite himself. “Fair enough.” He stood and poured himself a whisky, raising his glass to the wax head before he sat down again. “I expect Lady Pierrepont is glad she got old Bunky here to the altar before he was no longer able to make an honest woman of her.”

  Rowland nodded. He too had concluded that the marriage was one of necessity. “Poor girl seems to have swapped one scandal for another.”

  “She may not welcome you.”

  “No doubt.” Rowland swirled the brandy in its glass. “But as fond as I have become of Pierrepont’s sparkling conversation, he does not belong to us. I’ll have to at least try to return him to his widow.” Rowland read the letter without flinching. Penned in flowing ink on superior paper it nevertheless was a vitriolic diatribe of threats. Declaring him a race traitor, and a Bolshevik among other things more crude and profane, it explained in detail what he could expect when he fell into the hands of right-thinking men. It was the third such letter he’d received since the incident at the economic conference with Mosley’s Blackshirts.

  “What is it, Rowly?” Milton asked.

  Rowland handed him the page. The poet read silently. His jaw hardened and he cursed quietly. “Just let them try,” he muttered. “Just let them try.”

  Upon making enquiries through Menzies, Rowland discovered that Lady Pierrepont, formerly the Honourable Euphemia Thistlewaite, had retreated in her grief to the house of her godmother who lived in the town of Bletchley.

  “Where on earth is Bletchley?” Edna enquired.

  “It’s my understanding that it’s somewhere between Oxford and Cambridge,” Rowland said, frowning. He hadn’t anticipated roaming the countryside with a wax head. This was turning out to be an utter nuisance.

  The telephone rang before the logistics of the head’s return could be further considered.

  “A Miss Dawe for you, sir.” Menzies, who was clearly more spry than Beresford, had reached the telephone first.

  Rowland stepped into the small library off the sitting room to take the call. He returned just a minute later, muttering and looking for his hat.

  “What’s happened?” Edna asked, alarmed.

  “Apparently some idiot has decided that Allie is the principal suspect for the murder of Pierrepont. They’ve been interrogating her most of the night. The poor girl is beside herself.”

  Edna gasped. “That’s outrageous! They can’t do that!”

  “I’ve called Allen and Overy. I’m going to meet George Allen at Allie’s house… see if there is anything we can do legally to make them see sense.”

  Edna was already pulling on her gloves. Rowland didn’t try to dissuade her. In his experience the sculptress was a lot better with tears than he, and while their conversation had been brief, he had ascertained that Allie was in tears.

  Milton tossed him his hat. “Call if there’s anything we can do, Rowly, especially if you’re thinking of hitting anyone.”

  Clyde rolled his eyes. “Tell Allie to keep her chin up, mate.”

  Edna and Rowland took the motor taxi Menzies had arranged directly to Allie Dawe’s residence in Belgravia.

  “Is that a police car?” Edna asked as they pulled up behind the two-toned grey sedan.

  “An Armstrong Siddeley?” Rowland said, shaking his head. “I doubt it.” He paid the driver and offered Edna his hand as she alighted.

  It wasn’t till the motor taxi had pulled away that all four doors of the Armstrong Siddeley were flung open. A man emerged from behind each. They wore suits, tailored to a level of excellence that spoke of the public service rather than the constabulary.

  Rowland tipped his hat as he and Edna moved to step past.

  “Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us.”

  The men stood four abreast, barring their path. Only one spoke or responded in any way. “Mr. Sinclair, if you wouldn’t mind coming with us?”

  Rowland moved Edna behind him. “I do mind, actually. Have we met, sir?”

  “I’m afraid we must insist.”

  “You can insist all you want.”

  “We require you to accompany us, Sinclair.”

  “How dare you?” Edna said angrily. “I’ll scream!”

  The man nearest moved swiftly and efficiently, seizing the sculptress and clamping his large hand over her mouth.

  Rowland reacted furiously, launching himself at Edna’s assailant and prompting the other three men into action. They dragged him off and pinned him against the trunk of the Armstrong Siddeley.

  Rowland glanced at Edna, struggling against the iron grip which held and silenced her. He had no hope of even trying to protect her with one arm in a wretched cast.

  “Let the lady go and I will come with you,” he said. He repeated it in German.

  Now Edna looked terrified.

  The same man spoke again. “We are not interested in your young lady, Sinclair. Get into the car.”

  Slowly, with his eyes fixed on Edna, Rowland complied.

  “Madam,” the man addressed the sculptress now. “My colleague will release you directly. Bear in mind that Mr. Sinclair will be accompanying us, and we will be in earshot for at least a couple of minutes.”

  Edna nodded with the hand still suffocatingly firm across her face. She understood the threat.

  And so
, when they released her, she watched helplessly as the car doors were slammed shut and the Armstrong Siddeley pulled sharply away. She waited in desperate torn horror, until the vehicle turned and disappeared from sight before she screamed. Allie Dawe had anticipated the arrival of no one but Rowland Sinclair, yet it seemed that everyone but him converged upon her home.

  Edna was first.

  “Allie, I need to telephone the police.”

  “Whatever for—I don’t ever want to see the frightful police again!”

  “Allie, please… they’ve taken Rowly… Mr. Sinclair.”

  “The police have arrested Mr. Sinclair?”

  It took Edna several moments to make Allie understand that Rowland had been abducted by people who had nothing to do with the girl’s present troubles. Allie took her then to a neighbour who had the telephone connected.

  Edna telephoned the police, then Claridge’s, and then Ennismore Gardens. She broke down in panic when speaking with Clyde but gathered herself a little before she told Wilfred what had happened. By the time they returned to Allie’s home, the Sinclairs’ solicitor, Allen, had arrived as arranged. Soon the small terrace was crammed with police, Rowland’s friends, his brother and Stanley Melbourne Bruce, all asking questions with increasing urgency and volume. Mrs. Dawe fainted.

  Wilfred, in his way, took charge. First he demanded silence, and though he did not raise his voice or make any threat, he got it. The constables who had been sent to take Edna’s statement stood by sheepishly as Wilfred directed the housekeeper to make the distraught young woman a cup of tea. Then quietly, firmly, he asked the sculptress to tell him precisely what had happened.

  She did so.

  “What did these men look like?”

  Edna buried her face in her hands, trying to think. “Big, they were big and clean-cut. But otherwise nothing in particular… no—the one who put his hand over my mouth had a mermaid tattooed on his wrist.”

  “How long ago was this in your estimation, Miss Higgins?”

  “Half an hour at least.” Edna left the tea—she felt shaky, unable to manage the fine hand-painted china.

  “Did these men say who they were?”

  “No. They just demanded that Rowly go with them.”

  “What about Rowly? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t know them… at least at first. He asked if they’d met before.” Edna stopped, suddenly cold as she remembered. “German! In the end, he spoke to them in German!”

  Wilfred tensed, and Milton swallowed a profanity.

  “Surely they wouldn’t dare…” Clyde began.

  “My God, they’ll kill him,” Edna whispered.

  Wilfred sat opposite her, and looked directly into her face. “Think, Miss Higgins, did they seem German to you?”

  Edna hesitated. “Only one of them spoke,” she said, swallowing. “And he didn’t sound German but perhaps he was…” Edna wiped the single tear which had made its way past her resolve not to cry in front of Wilfred. “Who else would take Rowly, Mr. Sinclair?”

  Wilfred took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to the sculptress. “In my experience, Miss Higgins, Rowly acquires enemies the way you ladies acquire hats.”

  Edna studied him. “I know you’re worried, Mr. Sinclair,” she whispered. “Rowly obviously thought they were German.”

  Wilfred stood. “We’ll leave you to talk to the police, Miss Higgins.” He replaced his hat and tipped it at the sculptress before stalking away with grim purpose and Stanley Melbourne Bruce.

  Rowland sat wedged firmly and uncomfortably between two men in the back of the Armstrong Siddeley. They didn’t speak to or even look at him. Neither did they utter a word to each other.

  He tried to focus on his options, such as they were, to guess how they would get him back to Germany—was there an aeroplane waiting somewhere to return him forcibly to face trial… or worse? The man on Rowland’s left took a pewter cigarette case from his pocket. He extracted and lit four cigarettes one after the other, handing a stick to each of his companions before drawing deeply on his own. Rowland’s fist clenched as he struggled not to panic. With four men smoking within the cabin, the air was becoming thick and pungent.

  The Armstrong Siddeley did not pull up at the remote airstrip that Rowland expected, but at a gated country house in what was clearly a better part of London. The gates opened to admit the motor car.

  “Come on, Ed.” Milton took Edna’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The sculptress nodded. The policemen—an elderly half-deaf constable and another who was barely literate—had taken her statement and departed to canvass neighbours for any witness accounts. Allie had retired to her bedroom in tears, whether for Rowland or for her own predicament was hard to tell. Clyde was already outside. They walked silently at first, as if speaking of what had happened might endanger Rowland further somehow.

  Finally Milton spoke. “Prussia House is somewhere near here, I believe.”

  “What’s Prussia House?”

  “A terrace. It once housed the Embassy of the Weimar Republic. Now it’s where one would find the Embassy of the Third Reich.”

  “You think they might have taken Rowly there?” Clyde followed Milton’s thinking.

  “Technically speaking, I believe the embassy property is Germany.”

  Clyde removed his hat and looked up at a patch of blue between the buildings. He could not help but miss the broad Australian sky. “We’d better put Edna in a taxi back to Claridge’s and go have a look.”

  “You’re not putting Edna anywhere!” the sculptress said, angrily shoving Clyde. “Aside from the fact that I’ll do as I please, I’m the only one of us who can recognise the men who took Rowly!” For a moment the assertion was met with only silence.

  “She’s right, Clyde,” Milton said eventually. He frowned. “They’ll also recognise her, I suppose.”

  Clyde sighed. “Let’s go,” he decided. “If we see an Armstrong Siddeley in the driveway, we’ll have Wilfred declare war.”

  13

  OXFORD SHOCKS BRITAIN!

  The Union Goes Pacifist

  (By R. J. Foster)

  LONDON, February 16

  THE young bloods—or should it be the young bloodlesses?—of Oxford have been and gone and done it! Assembled in the Oxford Union, which is the University’s debating society, 275 of them against 153 have carried a motion: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and country.”

  Let King George and the British Empire take notice. If they will insist on getting mixed up in a war, they mustn’t look to Oxford to win it for them. They will just have to muddle along as best they can! It does not matter whether it is a war of aggression, or a war waged in self-defence, or in fulfilment of treaty obligations. In no circumstances—no circumstances, mind you—will the Oxford Union fight. So there!

  … In the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, in the clubs of St. James’ and Piccadilly, in all the places where Old Boys congregate to lament the decadence of the new generation, the disloyal declaration of the Oxford Union has been heard, with indignation and pain. Oxford, they are saying, has gone Red—or Yellow. And they are not only saying it: they are writing it, in purple letters to the press.

  … The letter-writers are not being allowed to have it their own way. The leader writers, too, are busy. Thus the, “Daily Express”:

  “The woozy-minded pacifists, the practical jokers, and the sexual indeterminates of Oxford have scored a great success in the publicity that has followed their victory at the Oxford Union. Even the plea of immaturity or the irresistible passion of the undergraduate for posing cannot excuse such a contemptible and indecent action as the passing of that resolution.”

  The Daily News, 1933

  Rowland stared, rendered speechless by fury and disbelief.

  The rear admiral stood and extended his hand. “Rowland! Delighted to see you again, my boy!”

  Rowland cursed. “Quex… what the hell—?
”

  “Now, now calm down, there’s a good chap. I did issue an invitation previously. Unfortunately, it was to no avail.”

  “You had me abducted from the streets, you flaming lunatic!”

  Hugh Sinclair sighed, and slapped Rowland companionably on the shoulder. “There’s really no need to get upset, sport, I simply sent a car for you.”

  “You sent four thugs to take me by force… for God’s sake, I thought…” He stopped. “Ed will have called the police by now.”

  Clearly the police did not concern Rear Admiral Sinclair. Instead, he chose that moment to introduce the thugs who had come for Rowland—all naval officers of considerable rank. And then he dismissed them.

  Rowland watched, fuming and incredulous. He had neither seen nor corresponded with his second cousin since before he’d left Pembroke House, and even then their relationship had been barely more than administrative.

  Hugh Sinclair hummed as he poured two generous glasses of prewar scotch. He motioned Rowland to the captain’s chair by his desk and set the whisky before him. Rowland left the glass untouched. Even if he had been predisposed to drink with his abductor, he hated whisky.

  “I must say, Rowland, I’m a little hurt that you have not called on me earlier.”

  “What do you want, Quex? Surely you didn’t kidnap me to remind me of my social obligations.”

  “Social obligations?” Hugh shook his head sadly. “Surely more than that… I was like a father to you, Rowland.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Hugh paused. “No, I suppose I should be relieved.”

  Rowland bristled.

  Hugh continued. “I remember that you and Henry were not always friends. I hoped that when Wilfred sent you abroad, and entrusted you into my care, that we at least could be friends.”

  “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Quex, but I don’t recall seeing you very often back then… unless I was about to be expelled.”

  Hugh Sinclair smiled. “Well, that was often enough.”