There was a kicking and scraping noise from the bottom of the little staircase, and she knew he was at the foot of the stairs, and hadn’t passed by the door without noticing it, and realising its significance.
She heard the sound of wood giving way. That would be the old chair. It would never have made a successful barrier, but it must have been older than she thought. She had considered that it would last a little longer than it evidently had.
There they were now, footsteps on the staircase, leading right to her place of concealment. The steps, however, were slow, and she imagined him savouring his moment of victory, approaching it at a pace that would allow him maximum enjoyment, at her discovery.
Her heart raced, and she felt her mouth and throat go dry. Should she have wished to scream, she didn’t believe she had the ability. Suddenly he spoke into the surrounding darkness.
‘I know you’re up here,’ he murmured, and there was an evil little snickering noise. ‘I know where you are,’ his voice taunted her. ‘And I’m coming to get you,’ she heard.
Maybe, in his intensity of purpose, he hadn’t heard the sirens, which heralded the arrival of the police. ‘I’ve got a flask here, of your favourite cocktail,’ he teased again, ‘and I’m going to get you to drink it all up, like a good little girl.’ His voice was getting closer and closer to her place of concealment.
In a fit of almost fatal folly, she found herself wanting to ask him which cocktail he had considered as her favourite, and had to bite hard on her bottom lip, to stop the words escaping from her mouth. She held her breath, and tried to keep every muscle absolutely still.
‘I’m coming to get you, and I’m getting warmer and warmer,’ the voice crooned on, and it did, indeed seem to be much closer to hand than it had been before. With a glance of absolute horror, she stared down, and saw his feet, just the other side of the suit of armour. What to do? What to do? She had to do something, or she’d be dead!.
Without giving it a conscious thought, she pushed with all her strength against the rusting metal structure and, using her feet as the main force, managed to unseat it and send it falling away from her. As it landed, she heard a scream close at hand and, suddenly, the lights went back on. She knew this, because light flooded up from the ballroom, along with the sound of running feet.
Inspector Moody tugged at the old-fashioned chain-pull that illuminated this part of the attics, and surveyed what lay before him. A man he recognised as Derek Foster lay on the floor, trying to struggle from beneath the weight of an elderly suit of armour. Lady Amanda Golightly was getting shakily to her feet, with a mouldering curtain over her, like a Regency-striped shroud.
Taking this scene in at a glance, he approached her and said, ‘Lady Amanda Golightly, I arrest you for the actual bodily harm of Mr Derek Foster of,’ here he stopped and searched his memory, ‘number eleven Mogs End,’ he concluded, smugly.
This rescue wasn’t going at all the way Lady Amanda had planned it.
Circumstances eventually sorted themselves out, Hugo was recovered from the old linen press, whence he had summoned help on the mobile phone he had discovered in Lady Amanda’s handbag, and Beauchamp was discovered tied to a chair in his sitting room, a gag in his mouth, and a nasty lump on the head where Foster had used a cosh on him.
Although Moody had difficulty in accepting that Foster was the sinning party, and Lady Amanda the party sinned against, he had no choice but to believe her, when both Hugo and Beauchamp backed up her story.
‘I say, Hugo, old chap, guess what I saw in the attics when I was up there?’
‘No idea, Manda, but don’t leave me in suspenders,’ Hugo replied.
‘The old Carstairs invalid chair with the cane-work back and seat. It was for Papa’s mama. Apparently a few hand-picked officers were allowed to convalesce here, during the First World War, and these were what they used to get around in when they weren’t quite the ticket. One of them was requisitioned for family use and, I’m afraid to say, was never handed in, and it’s still up there. I thought we might be able to use that now, and send that new-fangled affair back to social services.’
‘I shouldn’t do anything rash, my lady. Should the seat prove to be perished with age, Mr Hugo might go straight through it, and we should probably come across him, effectively hog-tied, as it were,’ Beauchamp felt compelled to suggest.
‘Good idea, Beauchamp. I shouldn’t like to have you come across me hog-tied by an invalid carriage, either,’ concluded Hugo, with feeling.
Before he left, there was one thing Inspector Moody wanted to get to the bottom of. ‘Would you care to explain to me why Mr Foster has so many bruises about his person?’ he asked, wondering how Lady Amanda was going to talk her way out of that one.
‘I’m afraid that’s all my doing, Inspector. Terribly sorry,’ Hugo apologised shame-facedly.
‘Your doing?’ Moody almost shouted. There was no way he could see this mild-mannered elderly gentleman inflicting violence on anything other than a wayward pillow in his bed.
‘I fear that Mr Foster may have tripped over the modern wheelchair that Lady Amanda just mentioned. I’m afraid I stupidly left it just outside the cellar door. And then, when the lights went out, I believe he became entangled with my walking frame on the first floor landing.’
‘He must have come through the wooden doors to the old coal chute. The padlock on those was always dodgy,’ Lady Amanda added.
As Foster was led off in handcuffs, Moody turned to his erstwhile thorn-in-the-side, and said, ‘I suppose you realise that this means two exhumations? He had his uncle cremated.’
‘If justice is to be done, Inspector, they are inevitable. Should you need any more evidence, I have the original cocktail glass out of which Mr Reginald Pagnell took his last drink on this earth. It is currently locked in my safe for security reasons, and if you analyse what it once contained, I think that your laboratory will discover, not only poison, but the traces of a cocktail called Strangeways to Oldham,’ she informed him, didactically.
‘If you had only listened to me in the first place, maybe two of these three unfortunate deaths could have been avoided.’ She was at her most imperious, as she addressed him, and he was suitably chastened by what he had discovered.
That did not, however, make him feel any more kindly disposed towards her, and at her pretty little victory speech, he merely made a sour grimace, and left the premises, promising that she would be required to give evidence, should her speculation about how the three men had died prove to be correct.
He had also had PC Glenister in tow, and as he left, in pursuit of his superior, he looked at Lady Amanda and gave her a huge wink. ‘I enjoyed that!’ he murmured, as he went out through the door, then looked back over his shoulder and mouthed, ‘Nice one, Lady Amanda!’
It was Wednesday evening, and all three of the occupants of Belchester Towers were sufficiently recovered and rested from their ordeal, to consider re-instating cocktail hour, which had been in abeyance for the last couple of days.
‘I think we shall have champagne cocktails tonight, Beauchamp,’ ordered Lady Amanda, sounding just like an elderly duchess bossing her staff around, so puffed up was she, at her own cleverness, and her triumph over the ill-mannered Inspector Moody. ‘And do have one yourself,’ she added magnanimously, as Beauchamp turned to leave the room.
Almost inaudibly, he muttered, ‘I always do, my lady. And the name’s still Beecham.’
‘Well, Hugo,’ she said, ‘How are you enjoying living here?’
‘It can be quite exciting,’ replied Hugo diplomatically.
‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’ she asked, rather overdoing the Lady Bountiful impression.
‘Except for the unusual experience of being pursued by a murderer,’ he said, nodding his head for emphasis.
‘That is not,’ she retorted, ‘part of the normal routine at The Towers. No, I meant everything else – food, laundry, your room, and so on.’
‘Oh, th
at’s all marvellous, and I do seem to be a lot more sprightly than I was, when I arrived here.’
‘You must be, Hugo,’ Lady Amanda purred, ‘if you’ve been leaving your invalid walker upstairs, and I don’t believe we’ve used that wheelchair since you had that appointment with that rather strange Dr Updyke.’
‘No, we haven’t,’ Hugo concurred.
‘Champagne cocktails, my lady, Mr Hugo,’ announced Beauchamp, entering the room with his usual silent tread, and making Lady Amanda, whose chair wasn’t facing the door, start with surprise.
‘Don’t do that, Beauchamp. I’ve told you before. If you must move silently, please cough, or do something else to announce that you are about to appear in our midst without the slightest of warnings.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
Lady Amanda and Hugo accepted their drinks, noticing that there was one left on the tray. Lady Amanda lifted her glass and toasted them with, ‘Chin-chin,’ (but in the French way – ‘shin-shin’), which left Hugo staring uncomprehendingly at his lower legs. ‘Glad to see you took me at my word, and mixed one for yourself,’ she said, but fell silent when there was a ring at the doorbell.
‘Who can that be, at this time of night?’ asked Lady Amanda, not expecting any answer.
‘How can we possibly know that before we open the door?’ replied Hugo, his usual common sense making itself known.
‘No, I mean, we’re having our little drinkies late, tonight. It’s nearly ten o’clock. No one should be making house calls at this time of night.’
‘Let’s all go,’ suggested Hugo, and they took him at his word, all three of them heading for the front door, Beauchamp still holding aloft his tray with his drink, as yet un-tasted.
It was Lady Amanda who actually opened the door, peered out into the darkness, then shrieked one word, before clutching her hand to her heart. ‘MUMMY!’
Recovering at lightning speed, she added, ‘But it can’t be you, you’re dead!’
A voice from out of the darkness, beyond the warm light spilling from the hall, spoke, as its owner took a step forward, to be recognised. ‘Hugo, you’ve become fat. Manda, whatever have you done to the colour of your hair? It looks cheap and nasty! Ah, Beecham, a champagne cocktail. My favourite! How thoughtful of you.’
Beauchamp smiled as he held out the tray to her.
THE END
White Christmas with a Wobbly Knee #2
Prologue
A Rave from the Grave
The very old lady made herself comfortable in a wing-backed chair, raised her glass, and proposed a toast. ‘To the return of the prodigal!’ she said, and swallowed her champagne cocktail in one gulp. ‘I’ll have another, if you please, Beauchamp,’ she said, imperiously, handing her glass to the unperturbed manservant.
‘Yes, my lady,’ he intoned, taking the glass, and making to walk away.
‘Hang on, Beauchamp, we have something to sort out here with regard to modes of address. I suggest that, while I’m here, you address me as “your ladyship”, and my daughter as “my lady”. That should sort out any misunderstandings before they happen.’
Lady Amanda, her hand raised to her cheeks with shock, her eyes staring, said, ‘But, Mummy, you’ve been dead these twenty years. How on earth can you be here? You died in that car crash with Daddy, or am I losing my mind?’
Lady Edith and her husband had been killed in a car accident on the London to Brighton Rally some twenty or so years ago, or so everybody had believed at the time, and Amanda had become Lady Amanda, and chatelaine of Belchester Towers.
Belchester Towers had been in her family since it was built by one of her forefathers. in the early nineteenth century. It was a red-brick structure in the likeness of a castle, even having a moat and drawbridge in its early years, before everything got too difficult with deliveries and the advent of the motor car.
Lady Amanda had taken it over happily, running her estate with only the help of her manservant and general factotum, Beauchamp, and the occasional help of an army of people from nearby Belchester, who came in periodically to give the place a ‘good going over’. Beauchamp arranged all this, as he did keeping the grounds mowed and clipped, and in a respectable condition.
The only regular help had been a woman from the windy backstreets of Belchester, by the name of Enid Tweedie, who had become very attached to Lady Amanda, a real friend in times of trouble. And, of trouble, there had been plenty in the recent past. Lady Amanda had not only discovered her old friend Hugo, mouldering away in a Belchester nursing home, but also another old friend, freshly despatched to the Almighty, and by human hand.
The subsequent events, which included getting Hugo moved into Belchester Towers, seeing a proper doctor, instead of the bumbling old fool he had been consulting, the ramifications of the murder, and their investigation into it, had changed her life beyond recognition.
And now, here was Lady Amanda’s supposedly long-dead mother, actually back in her old surroundings, taking over the situation, as she always had done in life. What had Lady Amanda done to deserve this, she wondered, still unable to believe that this was not a nightmare from which she would soon awake, and laugh off, in the light of day. She waited, in complete disbelief, for her mother’s explanation of how events were now flowing, and apparently had been, these last two decades.
‘Oh, Manda,’ her mother replied, completely unruffled, ‘you always were naive and gullible. Somebody died in that car crash, but it certainly wasn’t me; was it, Beauchamp?’ she added.
‘No, your ladyship,’ confirmed Beauchamp, without turning a hair.
‘You mean you knew about this, Beauchamp: and you never uttered a word to me about it, in all this time?’
‘That is correct, my lady,’ replied Beauchamp, his face a blank.
‘How could you! And just exactly who did die in that car, then, because they certainly buried somebody, and everyone – with the exception of secretive old Beauchamp here – thought it was you. I’m losing my mind – I know I am. This is all an hallucination, and I shall wake up in the nut-hut!’
‘That was my personal maid, Manda. Didn’t you notice how furtive she and Daddy were, when they were in the same room together. They were always sneaking off, too. Oh, I knew they were having an affair. That’s why I ran away during the night, before the day of the rally. I’d got wind of the fact – thank you very much for that, Beauchamp – that they were going to run away together on that rally, and I wasn’t going to be stuck here, with only that ghastly county set for company.’
‘So where have you been all this time?’
‘Why, the Riviera, of course, Manda. I’d already salted away a great deal of money on the continent, and I just needed to get out with some of my clothes and my jewels. Your father didn’t even notice I’d gone, I’m sure. We had separate bedrooms, after all. I just got someone to drive me to the station in the middle of the night, and I had all my arrangements made by letter and telephone, for the other end. By the way, thank you again, Beauchamp, for your part as secret chauffeur.’
‘I simply don’t believe this!’ Lady Amanda was incensed. ‘My own mother and my own manservant, in cahoots, deceiving me for two decades, and I suspected nothing.’
‘Well, least said, soonest mended,’ commented her mother, playing a new tune on an old saw.
‘And, no doubt you’ll expect to be known as Lady Edith again?’ Manda was catching on fast.
‘Well, it is my name, and I’m entitled to use it, as the dowager, now your father’s dead.’
‘And where exactly does that leave me?’ (There may be trouble ahead – cue violins!)
‘In just the same place that you are now, and have been for the last twenty years,’ said the dowager, giving her daughter the ghost of a smile. She might have known that her daughter’s first thought would have been for her own position.
‘Well, that’s all right then. But how long are you planning to stay? You’re not moving in for ever, are you?’ Thus, Lady Amanda betr
ayed feelings it would have been better to suppress, but Lady Edith was a thick-skinned woman, and just ignored the slight.
‘Only until they’ve finished renovating my new apartment in Monte Carlo. I’ve recently moved, you know. It’ll only be a few weeks – a few months, at the most.’
Lady Amanda didn’t know whether to be relieved or horrified. How would she cope with her mother back here, and no doubt trying to run her life for her again? She must be as old as the hills. What right had she to turn up here from the grave and look so sprightly?
‘I think you’d better make that three – no, four – more champagne cocktails, Beauchamp. And tell me, why does Manda insist on calling you Beauchamp? I never did.’
‘No, your ladyship, but your husband always insisted on the French pronunciation, so I suppose she just carried on the paternal tradition.’
‘Stuff and nonsense. Now, fetch those drinks, there’s a good man, before I die of thirst!’
Lady Amanda was sorely tempted by this remark, but with an enormous effort of will, managed to keep her thoughts to herself.
‘It’s good to see you again, Lady Edith.’ Hugo spoke for the first time since Lady Amanda had opened the front door and been confronted with what she at first thought was the shade of her mother. ‘I always enjoyed my visits to Belchester Towers.’
‘You’re here rather late, though, aren’t you? When are you going home?’ Lady Edith was even more forthright than her daughter, and wasted no time on small talk.
Hugo looked pointedly at Lady Amanda, considering that it should be she who explained the current situation to her mother. ‘Hugo lives here now, Mummy,’ she said, but got no further.
Belchester Box Set Page 17