Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King's Daughter

by Simon Brett

  ‘I hope, for the money I am paying you, I will get more than discretion.’

  ‘Name what else you require, sir, and it is yours.’

  ‘This I know. But tell me, is there danger that anyone here at Tawcester Towers might become aware of what we are planning?’

  ‘Very little danger, sir. We servants know our place, and it is not a place where independent conjecture or curiosity is encouraged. As for the ducal family, they are not susceptible to imaginative thinking. The Duke himself suffers from the congenital family stupidity, and his younger brother is about as bright as a dead mole at the bottom of a coal mine.’

  Here was another moment when Blotto had to curb his natural instinct to detonate.

  ‘But what about his sister? The Lady Honoria? I have heard she is a woman of considerable intelligence.’

  ‘She is, sir. And for that reason I will see to it that I effect the kidnap at a time when she is not present at Tawcester Towers.’

  ‘Good. You seem to have thought of everything.’

  ‘I pride myself on doing that, sir.’

  ‘But remember – if any news of what you are planning leaks out before the job is done, you will pay for your carelessness with your life.’

  ‘Sir, I never expected anything else. The cost of my life is incorporated in the fee.’

  ‘Excellent. And now I must leave.’ There was an element of relish in the Mitteleuropian voice as it continued. ‘For me, I think, the night is not yet at an end.’

  There was a clicking of heavy boots on the wooden floor of the billiard room, and Blotto realized that the secret conference was over. Rising warily, he peered over the top of his leather sofa, and was in time to see two men exiting the billiard room in different directions.

  One was the new footman, Pottinger. Blotto was the last person in the world to be prejudiced, but he knew you should never have trusted anyone with ginger hair.

  The other man was tall and blond, dressed in a ridiculously begarlanded Mitteleuropian uniform. Someone whose intellect fired on more cylinders than the Right Honourable Devereux Lyminster’s might have already deduced from the overheard conversation that he was one of the Grittelhoff brothers. But now even Blotto was in no doubt as to the foreigner’s identity. It was a Grittelhoff. Though in the semi-darkness whether it was Bogdan or Zoltan Blotto had no means of knowing.

  7

  Kidnap Alert

  ‘The trouble is, Twinks, they didn’t say who was going to be kidnapped.’

  ‘But they did say it was a she, Blotto, and they did say she was a guest at Tawcester Towers, so that narrows the field down a bit. In fact, if one excludes servants . . .’

  ‘And of course one does exclude servants. What on earth would be the point of kidnapping a servant?’ Blotto chuckled at the incongruity. ‘I mean, who’d waste money paying a ransom? If a servant went missing, you wouldn’t bother sending out a search party, would you? You’d just get another one.’

  ‘Precisely’ Twinks was sitting on the edge of her bed, her perfect form draped in grey silk pyjamas. The Mitteleuropian novel she had been reading when Blotto knocked on her door was face-down on the bedside table. ‘So,’ she mused, ‘the only two candidates for the role of victim are ex-Queen Klara and ex-Princess Ethelinde.’

  ‘Toad-in-the-hole!’ Blotto murmured in awestruck tones. His wished his mind worked like Twinks’s. Give her a couple of random facts and she could instantly build a spoffing great cathedral of logic out of them. Not for the first time, Blotto felt properly humble in the dazzling glow of his sister’s brilliance.

  ‘And, of the two, I would put my last petticoat on the ex-Princess.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, Blotto me old gumdrop, you have to ask yourself: which one of them means more to ex-King Sigismund?’

  ‘Why?’ he repeated.

  ‘Because the kidnap must be a way of getting at the ex-King. And from the way he looks at ex-Queen Klara, he clearly doesn’t care a tealeaf for her.’

  ‘No, well, people in royal marriages never do, do they?’

  ‘Exactly Romance in a royal marriage would only cloud the water. In such relationships the best starting point is always mutual loathing. But from the way the ex-King looks at ex-Princess Ethelinde . . . well, you can tell he’s got a spot as soft as a marshmallow for her.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he has.’

  ‘So anyone who wants to put the pressure on ex-King Sigismund has only got to threaten his daughter.’

  ‘But why should anyone want to put the pressure on ex-King Sigismund?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Blotto, press the self-starter on the old brainbox! Didn’t you listen to all that toffee he told you at luncheon about how he came to be an ex-King?’

  ‘No,’ her brother replied truthfully.

  ‘Well, you must have got the gist of it. His brother Vlatislav’s done the dirty on him and as a result the two of them are at daggers drawn.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I got that much.’

  ‘So the plot to kidnap ex-Princess Ethelinde must involve someone who’s in the pay of the usurper Vlatislav.’

  ‘Ah.’ Blotto let this thought embed itself in his mind for a moment. Then he said, ‘Except that doesn’t work. Because the usurper Vlatislav, stuck in Mitteleuropia, is not going to have dealings with a footman like Pottinger . . .’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘. . . so that would mean that the person in his pay must be one of the Grittelhoff brothers . . . either Zoltan or Bogdan . . . and it can’t be one of them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, because they’re in the pay of ex-King Sigismund.’

  ‘Has it never occurred to you, Blotto me old gumdrop, that a person could pretend to be in the pay of one employer, while in fact also taking money from that employer’s sworn enemy?’

  ‘Rodents!’ Her brother whistled. ‘Nobody’d be such a stencher as to do that, would they?’

  ‘It has been known.’

  ‘But, honestly . . . Well, I mean . . . That isn’t cricket, is it?’

  ‘The Mitteleuropians don’t play cricket.’

  ‘No.’ Blotto nodded, as a new insight came to him. ‘And that explains a lot about them.’

  ‘Now,’ said Twinks excitedly, clasping her arms around her silk-pyjama-clad knees, ‘since we’ve got this information, we must see to it that the kidnap attempt is thwarted.’

  ‘Good ticket,’ her brother agreed. ‘What, so do we call in Chief Inspector Trumbull?’

  ‘Heavens, no. He’d come clumping in like a hippo in hobnails and frighten the conspirators off in two tickles of a trout’s tail.’

  ‘Yes.’ An idea came to him. In the history of Blotto’s life such moments should be remarked on. They were rare. ‘I suppose we could just get Grimshaw to sack Pottinger?’

  ‘We can’t get involved in affairs below stairs.’

  ‘True. Then what do we do – expose the conspirators’ dastardly plan to ex-King Sigismund?’

  ‘No, we don’t want to worry the old fish. Besides, it’d put us in a slightly dingy light to suggest that such a rotten intrigue could even be contemplated at Tawcester Towers. We can’t make accusations against guests in the house, can we?’

  ‘No, frightfully bad form.’ Blotto’s noble brow crinkled. ‘But if we can’t accuse them, how can we stop them?’

  ‘Listen, at the moment Pottinger and whichever Grittelhoff brother it was haven’t done anything wrong . . .’

  ‘I don’t know. I was pretty vinegared off to hear what they –’

  ‘No, they’ve discussed doing something wrong. As the hosts of one of them, we can’t unleash the cavalry until we’ve actually seen them perpetrating a criminal deed.’

  ‘So . . .?’ Blotto’s face recomposed itself into its usual blankness.

  ‘So . . . we let them think no one knows about their plan . . . we let them get on with it . . . and then, just at the moment they try to kidnap the ex-Princess . . . we pounce!’

>   ‘Hoopee-doopee!’ said Blotto. ‘But how do we know when they’re going to pounce?’

  ‘They told you.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘In the conversation you overheard, yes. Pottinger said he was going to do the deed when I was away from Tawcester Towers.’

  ‘Oh yes, so he did. Well done, Twinks!’

  ‘It is well known in the servant circles that the day after tomorrow I have an appointment with my couturier in Bond Street.’

  ‘So you think that’s when the deed will be done?’

  ‘I’d put my last shred of laddered silk stocking on it.’

  ‘Right.’ Blotto’s impossibly handsome face looked troubled. ‘So while you’re up in Bond Street, it’ll be down to me to catch the stenchers red-handed?’

  ‘No. I think it’ll be better if I’m here too.’

  ‘Oh, I agree,’ said Blotto. Slowly a troubling thought loomed in his mind. ‘I think there might be a bit of a snag there, though. If, when the balloon goes up, you’re in Bond Street . . . well, you can’t be here at the same time. Can you?’ he asked, worried lest there might be some unsuspected flaw in his logic.

  ‘No, I certainly can’t. Well spotted.’ He beamed like a retriever who’s just retrieved a plugged pheasant for his master, as his sister went on, ‘However, I have a solution.’

  ‘Do you?’ Blotto waited, open-mouthed, as he had so many times before, in complete confidence that his sister would come up with the silverware.

  ‘I won’t go to Bond Street.’

  ‘Toad-in-the-hole . . .’ Blotto murmured again. ‘That, Twinks, is a masterstroke!’

  The following morning Chief Inspector Trumbull was summoned to Tawcester Towers by the Dowager Duchess. Sergeant Knatchbull stayed at Tawsworthy police station, busy dealing with a devilish outbreak of underwear theft from local washing lines.

  An air of triumph had settled on the Dowager Duchess’s solidly patrician features. The day before she had spoken to the mother of Bertie the Chief Constable, and the freemasonry of aristocratic matriarchs had once again worked its magic. A few reminders from his mother of humiliating incidents – and indeed accidents – during his childhood had quickly shown Bertie Anstruther where his duties lay, and he had rung the Dowager Duchess that morning with the message that she wished to hear.

  It was clear from Chief Inspector Trumbull’s abashed demeanour that he had also had a call from the Chief Constable.

  ‘So, Trumbull . . . I gather you have concluded your investigation into that unfortunate incident of the body in the library . . .?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘Excellent. And I also gather that you have written a report which you will be sending to the Chief Constable . . .?’

  ‘I have not yet completed the report, Your Grace.’ Chief Inspector Trumbull was a slow writer. ‘Indeed, I had just commenced it when I received Mr Grimshaw’s telephone call summoning me here.’

  ‘Well, so long as it’s in hand.’ Then the Dowager Duchess announced, rather in the manner of someone naming a ship, ‘I will also require a copy of the report.’

  ‘I am not sure, Your Grace, that including you in the distribution of the document would accord with the practices recommended by the police authorities in such –’

  ‘You will send me a copy, Trumbull. The Chief Constable assured me that you would.’ And Bertie’d better keep to his side of the bargain, she thought with relish, or there might start to circulate some nasty stories of soiled knickerbockers in the nursery.

  Trumbull recognized the appropriate limits of resistance. ‘Very good, Your Grace.’

  ‘But since the report is not yet finished, Trumbull, I would be grateful if you could provide me with a quick verbal résumé of its findings.’

  Chief Inspector Trumbull swallowed as if there were something distasteful in his mouth, then launched into his prepared speech. ‘Tuesday last I was called to Tawcester Towers to investigate the discovery of a dead body in the library. Despite initial indications of foul play, the man was found to have died of natural causes. Since he was recognized by nobody at Tawcester Towers, it was concluded that the dead man must have been a vagrant or itinerant worker who had broken into the house, possibly with burglarious intent. He has accordingly been buried in an unmarked grave, and the case is closed.’

  ‘Excellent,’ the Dowager Duchess purred. When it came to murder investigations, there was still something to be said for being a member of the British aristocracy. And when it came to pulling strings, she could weave whole tapestries out of them.

  She gave Chief Inspector Trumbull leave to return to Tawsworthy police station, where he could help Sergeant Knatchbull entrap the knicker nicker, while she herself went to berate Loofah further about his tardiness in producing a male heir. And the Dowager Duchess felt a huge sense of gratified relief that the murder of Captain Schtoltz would be investigated no further.

  Little knowing how differently her daughter Twinks viewed the situation.

  8

  A Murderer Unmasked!

  Twinks hadn’t told Blotto of her plans. Her brother could sometimes be absurdly chivalrous and if he thought she was about to do something inviting danger he was more than capable of putting his oar in. And Blotto’s oar tended to be very large and wielded with an abandon that wouldn’t have been approved of by his rowing master at Eton.

  But Twinks was determined to occupy the next day by finding out exactly how Captain Schtoltz had died. If, as she suspected, the men Blotto had overheard in the billiard room were responsible for the murder, then, once she’d proved that, she would be better placed to thwart their planned kidnapping of ex-Princess Ethelinde.

  Her enquiries would in time necessitate conversation with Grimshaw, but the first part Twinks could do on her own. Up in her bedroom she extracted three large manila envelopes from their hiding place in the lining of the ottoman, and spread the contents of one over the surface of her dressing table. Its mirror reflected the perfect symmetry of her face, the blonde hair that peeped shyly beneath the edges of her cloche hat, but Twinks was unaware of the image that faced her. Someone as beautiful as she had no need for vanity. Besides, she was far too interested in what lay on the table to notice anything else.

  She shuffled through the photographs she had taken of the unfortunate Captain Schtoltz in the library. She had already scanned them many times, but knew that each fresh scrutiny might unearth some detail that had hitherto escaped her. With a silver propelling pencil she entered her observations in a small leatherbound notebook.

  When satisfied that the photographs had told her all they could at that moment, she turned to the second envelope. This contained a plan of the upper storey of the part of Tawcester Towers that lay directly above the library. The area had been planned as a self-contained unit, which could effectively be shut off from the rest of the house. The original reason for this design had been to stop Duke Rupert the Unhinged from getting out, but it was equally suitable for preventing unwanted intruders for getting in. It had therefore been ideal for the Mitteleuropian party who, probably reacting to unpleasant experiences in less honourable countries, seemed not to trust the assurances of their safety given by the ducal family. So great was the ex-King’s level of paranoia that he would allow none of the Tawcester Towers staff into his private area. (From someone of less elevated status, the Dowager Duchess might have taken exception to this stricture, but at that moment Sigismund was still the rightful King of Mitteleuropia. Should subsequent political events prove this not to be the case, ex-Queen Klara had been left in no doubt by the Dowager Duchess that her family’s reception at Tawcester Towers in future might be considerably less indulgent.)

  The floor above the library was divided by a broad central corridor. On one side was the lavish suite of rooms occupied by the ex-King, ex-Queen and ex-Princess. Opposite were three less lavish rooms, which had been allotted, one either side to each of the Grittelhoff brothers, and the one in the middle to the unfort
unate Captain Schtoltz.

  The placing of his accommodation was a measure of the trust which ex-King Sigismund had placed in the murdered man. Schtoltz was part of the inner circle of security with which the usurped monarch surrounded himself. A trusted confidant, despatched on a secret mission, presumably to Mitteleuropia, a man of whose fate Sigismund was still unaware.

  After further intense scrutiny of the floor-plan, Twinks moved on to the contents of the third envelope. Taking the precaution first of spreading tissue paper across the table-top, she shook them out. To the casual observer they might have looked like domestic waste, the contents perhaps of a housemaid’s dustpan. But to Twinks’s informed eyes, each shred and scrap had its own secret to betray.

  She listed the items in her notebook. The stub of a match, a flake of tobacco, a carpet fibre, a scraping of white paint, a particle of chalk, a sliver of red leather, a curl of dyed wool. Between these objects and the photographs, Twinks knew she had the entire story of Captain Schtoltz’s murder. Everything was there. She had only to find the code that would unlock the enigma.

  Against each item she then listed the exact place where it had been found when she had examined the body in the library. The match-stub she had found in Captain Schtoltz’s waistcoat pocket; the flake of tobacco had come from the lapel of his jacket. The carpet fibre had been caught in a crevice in the dead man’s shoe; the white paint had been scraped off by one of the buttons on his cuff. The particle of chalk had lodged in the engraved initials on his signet ring; the sliver of red leather had been found in his trouser turn-up. And the small curl of dyed wool had been trapped amongst the jewels on the flamboyant insignia pinned to his sash.

  Twinks submitted all of the items on the tissue paper to even more detailed inspection. She sniffed at some of them – particularly the curl of wool – and then consulted various weighty tomes that she kept hidden behind the ball dresses in one of her wardrobes.

  A murder scenario was taking shape in her head. But there still remained a few missing pieces in her jigsaw of Captain Schtoltz’s death. She rang the bell for Grimshaw.