Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

by Sulari Gentill

  At this juncture, Edna walked in through the door that connected the penthouse suites. “Rowly… Oh, hello.”

  The gentlemen stood, and Rowland introduced Murcott.

  “I am very glad to hear Sinclair introduce you as Miss Higgins, dear lady. If he had introduced you as Mrs. Sinclair, I’m afraid I would have been forced to hate him again.”

  Edna laughed. She had always enjoyed meeting Rowland’s university chums. For men so privileged and educated they were invariably idiots. Thoroughly pleasant, but idiots.

  “If you and your charming friends don’t come to Bloomington, Sinclair, you may consider our families at war!” Murcott declared. “I may no longer be a lord, but I could raise an army of sorts… I’m sure Mummy would fight if I asked her…”

  Rowland laughed now. Losing the peerage suited Murcott. He was a great deal more agreeable than he had ever been as Lord Lesley.

  Murcott stood. “I should go… it would be frightfully rude to stay longer since I have come unannounced, and I do have an appointment for billiards at my club. Perhaps we could chalk a cue at Bloomington, Sinclair? We might even wager a little something on the outcome to make it interesting.”

  Murcott shook Milton and Clyde’s hands and kissed Edna’s. “I know, my dear,” he said as he did so. “A dreadful French affectation but you must forgive me for I am but a man enslaved.”

  Once again, Edna laughed at him.

  “Remember, Sinclair,” Murcott warned as he retrieved his hat from the wax head and stepped towards the door. “Visit or it will be war!” “Good Lord!” Clyde groaned as Menzies closed the door behind Murcott.

  Edna smiled. “I quite liked him. Were you good friends, Rowly?”

  “Not at all. He was insufferable, but he does seem to have mellowed somewhat. If he’d been like this back then I wouldn’t have taken his car.”

  “Perhaps he’s hoping you’ll give it back,” Milton suggested.

  “Not a chance of that,” Rowland said firmly, vaguely glad his Mercedes was safely garaged at Woodlands House.

  “Shall we accept his invitation?” Edna uncurled her legs and sat up.

  “To Bloomington?” Rowland looked a little alarmed. “You’re bound to find Oxford rather dull after London.”

  Clyde snorted. “That’s not what I’ve heard, mate. Your time there seems to have prepared you for every bizarre perversion under the British sun!” He nodded towards the head on the sideboard.

  “A change of scenery might be just what the doctor ordered,” Edna said as she noted the weariness around Rowland’s eyes.

  “No… I’m sure he said I should drink Horlicks and smoke.”

  Edna continued undeterred. “I think Mr. Murcott is rather fun and it’s quite obvious that Wilfred doesn’t want you anywhere near his conference.”

  The last was certainly true. While Rowland Sinclair had not been arrested for the incident with Mosley’s Blackshirts, it had been made amply clear that he was no longer welcome at the Geological Museum. Wilfred had renewed his demands that his brother return to Sydney.

  Milton glanced up from his paper. “You haven’t any indiscretions buried at Oxford that you don’t want us to discover, do you, Rowly?”

  Rowland laughed. “I don’t remember burying any of them.”

  “We could return Lord Pierrepont to Lady Pierrepont on the way… or the way back,” Edna added, looking over to the head. “Though I have become rather attached to him to be honest. It really is a friendly face once you become used to it.”

  “I’m not sure that Bletchley is on the way to Oxford,” Rowland objected.

  “This is England,” Milton replied. “The place is so flaming small, everything’s on the way.”

  Despite his exasperation with Rowland’s more recent conduct, Wilfred did, over the next week, manage to secure appointments with two separate and senior advisors to Ramsay MacDonald’s government. Rowland left both meetings frustrated to the point of despair.

  Unable to reveal what exactly he was doing in Germany, the young Australian was dismissed as some art-loving dilettante who had offended the Nazis with reckless and tactless liberalism.

  “It is important to be culturally sensitive, Mr. Sinclair. Not every country is as tolerant as England.”

  His broken arm was discounted as the unfortunate result of a too zealous, but legal, restraint.

  “It’s not unusual in these volatile situations for some unintentional injury to occur. In most cases the authorities are justified.”

  The incarceration and abuse of dissidents in the Dachau concentration camp was scorned as left-wing propaganda.

  “You didn’t actually enter the camp did you, Mr. Sinclair? I think you’ll find that reports of mistreatment are vastly exaggerated. Our delegations to Germany have come back with only praise for the order of German society. Certainly your own countryman, Colonel Eric Campbell, has just returned from a tour of Germany—to sell soap, I believe. He is perfectly satisfied that Jews, in particular, are being well treated.”

  Even the burning of books was rationalised and excused.

  “The Germans are as entitled as we to censor in the interests of public morality, Mr. Sinclair. As I said, it’s imperative that the modern traveller exercise a little cultural sensitivity.”

  Appeasement, it seemed, was the policy of the day and whatever influence Wilfred and Bruce had exerted in procuring Rowland audiences with these men of the Civil Service only went so far. Everybody was sympathetic of course, but really it was a bit much to expect that his personal misadventure would influence the course of nations.

  Humiliated and disgusted, Rowland had begun to consider Archibald Murcott’s now repeated invitation to visit.

  Wilfred had encouraged him to venture out of London—to clear his head and get some sleep before he tried again. His companions had agreed. For one thing the wax head was still on the sideboard at Claridge’s and they had all begun to talk to it.

  “You’d better get rid of it soon, Rowly,” Clyde grumbled. “They won’t let us have it at the asylum.”

  Adding irritation to Rowland’s frustration, the threatening letters had not ceased. Although he was scornful of what he called the letter-writing arm of the B.U.F., the vitriolic correspondence contributed to his weariness of London.

  And so, Rowland accepted the invitation to Bloomington Manor. Exhausted and discouraged, he even welcomed the idea of a few days’ distraction. He had, after all, promised a wax head that he would make enquiries into the murder of Pierrepont. Where better to start than the late lord’s widow?

  The Oxford train pulled into Kings Cross Station emerging through a cloud of steam and a herald of screaming whistles. Edna rose onto her toes trying to see through the press of bodies.

  Wilfred lifted Ernest in his arms. “I’ll see you in a few days then, Rowly. Try to stay out of trouble.”

  Rowland winked at his nephew.

  Ernest giggled.

  The porter took their trunks aboard and secured the luggage onto a rack above the seats in their first class compartment. If he noticed that the contents of the hatbox were particularly heavy, he did not mention it.

  When Edna had first produced the hatbox, it seemed an insensitive and rather undignified manner in which to transport the head of a peer but, after due consideration, it was decided that the silk-lined box was the most sensible option. They couldn’t very well travel with the wax likeness tucked under their arms.

  Rowland opened the window and summoned the ice-cream vendor who spruiked his wares up and down the platform. They all hung out of the window choosing flavours with the enthusiasm and debate of children at the seaside. The vendor ran beside the train to hand over the last cone and they eventually retreated into the compartment with what seemed to be the spectrum in iced confection.

  Clyde sat with a cone in one hand and a pen in the other finishing a letter to his sweetheart, Rosalina. Beside him lay open Milton’s copy of Paradise Lost from which Clyde was carefully tra
nscribing.

  Rosalina Martinelli had once been an artist’s model. It was when she’d posed for Rowland that she had met Clyde. Now Rowland happily used the fact that Clyde was stepping out with the young woman to refuse to use her again. He called it a courtesy to his friend, but the decision had more to do with the fact that, while beautiful, Rosalina did not have the temperament he required of a model. She was shy, and fidgety and predisposed to tears. He’d found painting her a trial of the worst kind.

  The letter Clyde was writing was already several pages long, as it seemed Rosalina insisted upon long protestations of adoration. Taxed beyond measure by the literary demands of love, Clyde had turned to his friends for help. Milton had suggested he insert vast tracts of poetry, prefaced with, “In the words of so-and-so, my love…” He assured Clyde it would work. Rowland simply expressed surprise that Milton was advocating attribution rather than barefaced plagiarism. And so Clyde was transcribing from Paradise Lost.

  “I’m sorry, mate,” Rowland said quietly as he watched Clyde work diligently with his pen. “You must be desperate to get back to Miss Martinelli, and I’m keeping us here…”

  Clyde looked up. “Rubbish. You’d put me on a ship back today if I asked. I haven’t asked.”

  “I do wonder why not. God knows how long it will take me to get someone to listen… and Miss Martinelli would be glad to see you.”

  Clyde cursed as his ice-cream dripped onto the page. “Rosie’s family emigrated from Italy to Australia to escape the Fascisti,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to mop it up. “Her father was a trade unionist when Mussolini came to power. She understands why I’m here, mate, and it may make her father hate me less.”

  Rowland smiled. He’d gathered that Rosalina’s father considered Clyde unsuitable. “I’m not sure how much of what we did in Germany you’ll be able to tell him,” he said regretfully. They had after all gone there as spies and left being wanted for murder.

  Clyde sighed. “There is that… Still,” he glanced at the hatbox which sat on the rack above Edna, “we can’t very well leave without seeing Pierrepont safely home. Now that he’s become your confidant and all.”

  Rowland laughed. “If you change your mind, Clyde, just say. I’ll organise something.”

  Clyde grunted and returned to transcribing. “Did you and that solicitor bloke sort Allie out?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “As far as possible. Allen’s let the police know that he’s acting for Allie, but really there’s not much more he can do legally.” Rowland frowned. The constabulary’s focus on Allie concerned him for a number of reasons. The notion that she had murdered Pierrepont was ridiculous, of course, but if the official scrutiny of Allie reached the papers, she would be socially ruined regardless.

  “What motive could Allie possibly have to kill her uncle?” Clyde asked. “Wasn’t he looking after her and her mother financially?”

  Milton turned. “There’s a lot more that goes on within families than that which meets the world’s eye. One can’t help but wonder how Pierrepont got hold of his sister-in-law’s nightie. If she didn’t keep fainting we might have asked her by now whether she actually gave him her night attire or whether Bunky was a snowdropper!”

  As indelicately as the poet had chosen to put it, Rowland had to agree. Not that he thought Allie was guilty, or intentionally keeping things from them. It was merely that there were questions that they had not yet thought to pose.

  15

  “Nonsense”

  No Degeneracy

  OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

  More nonsense has been talked in the last year of the relative degeneracy of Oxford as compared with Cambridge than any similar topic has excited since I first began to know and understand the University (writes Lord Birkenhead, High Steward of Oxford University, in the London Daily Telegraph).

  It may perhaps be premised that the principal object of a university is still to produce men of learning, research and cultivation, highly equipped scholars, resourceful and up-to-date scientists, erudite theologians. It has not, so far as I know, even been pretended, in any one of these matters that Oxford lags behind any university in the world. Some of us, indeed, who particularly love this venerable home of learning, would put the matter considerably higher. But the argument does not require it.

  Northern Star, 1930

  They disembarked among crowds of students and professors returning from weekends in London—young men in blazers and straw hats, older men with academic robes billowing about them in the late summer breeze.

  Murcott emerged from the first of two waiting Bentleys and waved excitedly. “I say, Sinclair, over here.” He clapped his hands to encourage the chauffeurs who ran out to meet the Australians and take the trunks.

  “I’ll take that for you, sir.” The young driver reached for the hatbox.

  It was perhaps that the chauffeur was too eager or that, reluctant to hand the contents of the hatbox to the keeping of another, Rowland was slow to release his grip. The result was that both fumbled and the hatbox was dropped. The lid fell open, Lord Pierrepont’s head tumbled out and rolled onto the platform. One man and two women fainted and several screamed.

  Milton acted quickly, scooping up the head before it could roll onto the track. Someone shouted for the police and Rowland cursed as several railway officials headed towards them.

  “Quickly, into the motors,” Murcott cried, waving them in.

  They hesitated for only a second as the passengers who had seen Pierrepont fall out of the hatbox became still more agitated. Rowland and Edna rode in the first vehicle with Murcott while Milton and Clyde took the second. Despite the shouts from the platform and the red-faced official rapping on the windscreen, Archibald Murcott instructed his chauffeur to “Drive on.”

  “I’ll telephone and explain later,” he promised. “I don’t fancy waiting to answer a lot of hysterical facile questions and, after all these years, Ivy is most anxious to see you again, Sinclair… What do you think of my new motors, old boy? The latest Bentleys—every modern convenience, but still I miss that Mercedes you won from me. I hope you’re treating her as a gentleman should…”

  Rowland sat back as Murcott played tour guide to a delighted Edna, pointing out the areas of the various Oxford colleges within the centre.

  “That’s Bath Place,” Murcott said as they passed a cluster of stone cottages. “Lodged there myself in the day… passed it on to my cousin when I left Merton… and just beyond is the Bridge of Sighs.”

  “Oh, how lovely,” Edna gasped as they drove beneath the small covered bridge which spanned the road. “Why is it called the Bridge of Sighs, Mr. Murcott?”

  “I’m not sure, dear lady,” Murcott replied. “I presume it’s something to do with lovesick students…” He gazed at her and smiled. “I must say I feel rather like sighing myself.”

  Rowland grimaced and Edna laughed.

  Bloomington Manor stood at the centre of a large estate southwest of the university city. The manor was an early Victorian jewel of extraordinary proportions. Vast and white with multiple rows of Palladian windows overlooking lush manicured lawns and Italianate gardens tended by a small army of groundsmen.

  The house servants stood in a formal receiving line at the foot of the entrance stairs. A young woman stood at the top. From a distance she cut a striking figure in a slim-fitting skirt and bolero jacket. Her hat, set at an angle, was a vibrant red.

  Ivy Murcott was small, pale and bird-like in her features and movements. To Rowland she seemed to flutter and dart, directing servants to attend to luggage and others to make tea. She flushed deeply as Rowland shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Sinclair. It seems like just yesterday when we last spoke.”

  “Likewise, Miss Murcott,” Rowland replied though he could still not recall ever being introduced to the sister of Murcott, or Lesley as he was then. He found it puzzling—a little unsettling. Rarely did he forget a face, and Ivy had the kind of
face he was likely to remember. It was not beautiful by any means, but interesting. There was a kind of anxious mystery to the girl, a quiet, sharp observance. Her nose was narrow, her eyes small and dark, but her lips were generous and voluptuous, a surprise on her otherwise unremarkable face.

  The Murcotts took their guests on a tour of Bloomington Manor and its immediate grounds. There were two separate stables on the property. One housed Murcott’s beloved motor cars, of which he seemed to own six. The other, more conventionally, kept horses—excellent animals which were apparently Ivy’s great passion.

  “I have never yet been able to reach a kill before Ivy,” Murcott boasted for his sister. “I venture there is no man or woman in England who could best her in the hunt!”

  “Archie, stop,” Ivy pleaded. “It’s not me,” she said, stroking the nose of a black Arabian gelding. “It’s Duke. You were born for the hunt, weren’t you, darling?”

  Rowland reached out to pat the horse.

  “Careful, Sinclair,” Murcott warned. “He’s a bad-tempered beast… bitten me twice—nearly took my fingers last week!”

  With Ivy present, however, the horse seemed no longer a man-eater and tolerated Rowland’s hand without blood being drawn.

  They returned to the manor for a luncheon of cold roast pheasant served with piccalilli and spiced quail eggs.

  “You must watch out for the buckshot,” Ivy Murcott warned her guests. “Archie shot this one.”

  Among the Australians only Rowland did not seem confused.

  “I say, that’s uncalled for old girl!” Murcott protested.

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “Archie is a terrible shot… if he actually manages to bring down a bird you can assume there will be buckshot scattered through it.” She removed a fragment of lead shot from between her teeth and placed it on the side of her plate in demonstration of her point.

  Murcott sighed. “I’m afraid, unlike Ivy, I can never seem to take the head off cleanly. Make sure you don’t chew too vigorously… you’re quite likely to break a tooth.”

  Conversation became a little subdued as the men chewed tentatively and with great concentration thereafter. Edna decided to abandon the pheasant entirely and stay with the quail eggs and piccalilli. It was not a great deprivation as the pheasant had been preceded by a course of soup and then fish.