Belchester Box Set

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘Don’t know,’ replied Hugo, not really getting the point at all. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  Lady Amanda was, in fact, pulling off Hugo’s hat and scarf, and had already started undoing the buttons of his overcoat as he asked his question. ‘You’re not going out in all those layers. You’ll give the game away before we’ve even got out of the hall, blundering around in half a wardrobe’s worth of clothes. There, that’s better!’

  Hugo was now stripped down to his indoor pullover again. ‘But, I don’t understand. I thought you told me to get ready. That’s all I’ve done.’

  ‘I asked you to get ready for entering somebody’s house without their permission, and giving it a jolly good search. Stand there and wait for me, and I’ll get you what you need.’

  ‘Hang on! Can’t I at least have my scarf back?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘You’d only knock over something with it or, knowing you, trip over it and make a hell of a row.’

  Lady Amanda joined him shortly with a navy blue balaclava helmet, hand-knitted by her mother during the war. ‘Here you are, Hugo. Put that on. The moth doesn’t seem to have got at it,’ she instructed him, mirroring his action with the twin of his headgear.

  ‘Now, take these,’ she told him, holding out a torch and a pair of horribly pink rubber gloves.’

  ‘What on earth do I need these for?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you don’t suppose we can just stroll in and turn lights on willy-nilly, do you? And I don’t want you leaving any fingerprints. If it’s suspected that the place has been turned over, that ferret-faced Moody will be in there like a shot, looking for traces of whoever it was who had been searching. I don’t want him to come sniffing round here because you haven’t had the sense to wear gloves.’

  ‘But I look like I’m about to do the washing up, Manda. And I’m going to catch my death without at least a coat on.’

  ‘Firstly, this is not a fashion parade. We’re looking for evidence in a case of murder, and secondly, we’ll be in the Rolls for most of the journey. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it is adequately heated, and I’m sure Porky doesn’t keep her house at sub-zero temperatures, even at night. When you’re not in one, you’ll be in the other, so stop whingeing, and let’s get off, or Enid will wonder where we’ve got to.’

  ‘But surely Porky will hear us.’ Hugo thought he had a good point here, as he’d certainly know if someone was rummaging about near his bedroom.

  ‘Not a problem, Hugo. I’ve got Enid to drug her.’ Lady A’s face betrayed not a shred of conscience.

  ‘You’ve done what?’ Hugo’s mouth was agape at what he’d just heard.

  ‘I just slipped a couple of sleeping tablets to Enid and gave her instructions for administering them. By the time we get there, Porky should be sleeping the sleep of the dead.’

  ‘Manda! That’s hardly cricket, is it?’ Hugo was appalled.

  ‘No, but then, neither is murdering a man in my home, and I am determined to get to the bottom of it, and see the murderer put behind bars. Popeye may not have been the easiest man to like, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered, and that’s that! So let’s be off! Hugo, what the Christopher Columbus are you doing with those walking sticks?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get through to you that my knee’s been giving me severe gyp, but you’ve either not taken it in, or ignored me completely.’

  ‘But you can’t go round a house in the middle of the night with two sticks and a torch. How are you going to hold the torch?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Manda: I shall sort out how to do it when we get there. It’s a bit late now to be worried about the sticks. A little more sympathy and care when I first mentioned it, might have negated the need to use them at all.’

  ‘Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton- Crump, I shall swing for you one of these days. Put your Marigolds in one trouser pocket, the torch in the other, and let’s get out of here before dawn breaks and finds us still standing here bickering.’

  ‘Will Beauchamp be coming in with us?’ asked Hugo, knowing he was pushing his luck.

  ‘No he certainly will not. He has to stay with the car in case we need to make an emergency get-away. Now get yourself through that door before I lose my temper with you.

  At Journey’s End, Beauchamp dropped them off at a pedestrian side-entrance, well screened by trees, and switched off the engine. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘just push the call button on your mobile phone, and I’ll start the engine, ready to make a break for it. The phone’s already programmed with my number, so all you’ve got to do is push ‘send’.’

  ‘Walk on the grass, Hugo, not on the path,’ directed Lady A, remembering that the path was gravel, and walking on it would be the night-time equivalent of having a brass band escort them to the dwelling.

  ‘But the grass is crunchy with frost, and my feet’ll get frozen,’ Hugo moaned.

  You can put them in a mustard bath when we get back,’ whispered his companion.

  ‘But I’ll get chilblains,’ he went on.

  ‘Hugo?’

  ‘Yes, Manda?’

  ‘Would you like a smack in the mouth?’

  ‘No, thank you. I feel I shall be just fine if I walk on the grass, and a mustard bath would be very soothing.’

  ‘Good boy, Hugo!’

  There was no need for torches, as the bitterly cold night boasted a clear sky, and moonlight lit their way adequately, and might prove of some use in helping them navigate their way around the house.

  ‘Manda?’

  ‘What now?’ Lady Amanda was getting a bit fed up with the peevish note in Hugo’s voice.

  ‘My sticks are slipping in the frost.’

  ‘Then take my arm until we get to the front door. Really! It’s like taking a five-year-old to the dentist, taking you anywhere.’

  ‘I just don’t want a broken hip,’ Hugo whispered plaintively.

  ‘You’ll get a split lip, if you moan any more. Now, pull yourself together and … oh, my God!’ Lady Amanda had abruptly halted and frozen in position, a condition that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.

  ‘What is it, Manda?’ asked Hugo, his blood suddenly running colder than the outside temperature could possibly be responsible for.

  ‘There’s a policeman on guard outside the house. Don’t move! We’ll have to wait until he does a circuit of the property, before we can give Enid the signal to let us in.’

  They stood in silence for exactly two minutes, before Hugo said, with an element of urgency in his voice, ‘Manda?’

  ‘What is it this time, Hugo?’ she answered, wondering what he was going to complain about next.

  ‘Manda, I need to go. Now!’

  ‘Just like a man!’ she hissed angrily. ‘Out of the house for five minutes, and you need to use the lavatory. Well, you’ll just have to hang on until we can get inside, or go behind one of the bushes.’

  ‘I can’t ‘go’ outside. I was very strenuously potty-trained, you know,’ he replied, a note of anguish entering his voice.

  ‘Look, he’s going!’ Lady Amanda cut in. ‘The policeman! He’s off on a tour round the house, probably to check all the doors and windows. Now’s our chance. Run!’

  ‘!’

  ‘Make a noise like an owl, Hugo, like you used to, when we were young. That’s our signal to Enid to get the front door open.’

  Lady Amanda remembered well the realistic owl hoots that Hugo used to produce, cupping his hands together and blowing expertly through his thumbs but, tonight, his hands stayed firmly at his sides on his sticks. ‘Toowit-toowoo,’ Hugo warbled, giving it his best shot, but sounding more like a lame sound-effect in a very cheap and amateur production.

  Lady A stood rooted to the spot with horror, her fond memories scattered by this parody of his old skill. ‘What on earth do you think you’re playing at?’ she hissed, sounding like an angry snake. ‘You used to do it with your hands, Hugo! I could’v
e said ‘toowit-toowoo’. You were supposed to blow through your thumbs and make a noise that at least sounded like an owl, and not some old man trying, and clearly failing, to sound like one.’

  Still holding firmly to his sticks, Hugo gave a shrug, almost Gallic in its expressiveness. ‘I can’t do that any more, Manda. Arthritis! My hands just aren’t the same shape as they were. Tempus has fugit-ed, and all that, and I can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, even for you and for old times’ sake. Sorry!’

  ‘Miss Marple never had this sort of trouble!’ she retorted, knowing that comparisons with Agatha Christie’s heroine would come into play at some part of the investigation. ‘Look, Enid must have heard you anyway. She’s opening the door. Quick!’

  ‘!’ Once again, Hugo was speechless at her hopeless command. The only ‘quick’ he could manage was being alive, and when he stopped being able to do that any more, he would be so slow, he would be dead.

  At the door, Enid was hopping up and down with nerves, and scooped them through the entrance as if she were a human ladle. ‘Thank goodness you’re here at last,’ she said, ‘I’ve been tiptoeing to this door and opening it at the sound of every owl for the last hour. My nerves are shredded, because, every time I came to open it, there was that PC Glenister.

  ‘My heart was in my mouth, I can tell you, but each time, he just bade me a polite ‘good evening’, smiled and touched his helmet in greeting, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary for an elderly woman to be running to the front door every five minutes, at this time of night. I felt I should die of embarrassment after the last time, for I’m almost sure I heard him say, ‘They’ll be here soon.’ But at least, thank God, I knew that one was Mr Hugo’s,’ she concluded with relief, only to have her complaint cut short by Hugo’s urgent whispering.

  ‘Where’s the lavatory? Tell me quickly! Cold weather always does this to me,’ he explained, shooting a look full of daggers at his partner in crime. ‘Urine contains DNA – even I know that – and I don’t want us to be arrested because of the presence of my ‘doings’ on the hall carpet!’

  As Hugo unburdened himself (as quietly as possible, to avoid any one of them suffering unnecessary embarrassment – oh! how he missed the bees or the flowers on the old Victorian lavatory pans, which at least gave a man something to aim at) in a small cubicle just off the hall, Lady Amanda explained, as if to a child, why Enid had been wasting her time for the last fruitless sixty minutes. ‘My dear woman, to arrive early is as bad-mannered as to arrive late so, of course, we’re here at the exact hour. What else did you expect of us?’

  Ignoring this finer point of etiquette, so as to waste no more time, Enid explained that she’d done exactly as she’d been asked, and administered the drug in a cup of cocoa, which Porky, unexpectedly for her, took without sugar. ‘She didn’t notice a thing, then said she felt absolutely exhausted, and I helped her up to bed. That was about three hours ago, but I don’t know how long the tablets will work for.’

  ‘Why did you give them to her so early?’ asked Lady Amanda, frowning crossly. She’d hoped that they would be slipped to her about eleven o’clock.

  ‘Because I always go to bed at about half-past nine,’ replied Enid, without a thought to her lack of logic.

  ‘You blasted idiot, Enid. You knew you were going to let us in at midnight, so why didn’t you wait a couple of hours?’

  Enid’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, Lady Amanda, I just didn’t think. I could have stayed up later, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Of course, you blithering idiot, but we must just make the best of things. You’re going to have to be on guard on the landing now, in case she wakes and tries to leave her bedroom. Take a glass of water up with you, then you’ve got an excuse to be out of your room. You can either say you went to get it for yourself, or you went to get it for her, but, whatever you do, don’t let her come out of her room.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Anything you say. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘First things first,’ said Lady A, ignoring her apologies. ‘Where’s Popeye’s study?’

  ‘Upstairs in the box-room,’ Enid informed them, steeling herself for Lady Amanda’s reaction to this unhappy news.

  ‘Upstairs? God deliver me!’ She sighed deeply, as if the world were full of fools, and she the only sensible one in existence. ‘Well, we’ve no choice. You go up to the landing and keep an eye on her door, and Hugo and I will follow you up to search. We’ll just have to play this one by ear. Now, off you go!’

  Enid tiptoed up the stairs, her legs trembling with fear and adrenalin. Hugo went next, placing his sticks with care as he slowly climbed. Lady Amanda followed behind – just in case Hugo fell, and she had to catch him.

  All went well until Hugo reached the half-landing, when one of his sticks slipped on the wood at the edge of the carpet of the stair he was just mounting. It shot sideways, and he was unable to do anything about it as it hit the dinner gong on the half-landing with a sonorous and echoing ‘bong’.

  The three of them became a frozen tableau, each arrested mid-action, as if part of a paused film. Amanda was the first to react, hearing movement from Porky’s bedroom and a series of short moans. She fled back down the stairs, dragging a bewildered Hugo in her wake, his sticks in one hand, as Enid rushed to the bedroom door to prevent Porky coming out on to the landing to find her house invaded by midnight friends.

  Hugo did his best to dismount as rapidly as he could manage, given the state of his joints, and the vigour with which he was being pulled, but was given a jolt of unexpected haste as he heard a key turn in the front door, and a voice call out, ‘Is everything all right in there?’ The last things he remembered before he was in darkness, were a hearty shove between the shoulder blades and the sound of a door slamming shut behind him.

  PC Glenister entered the darkened hallway of Journey’s End, having heard the sounding of the gong, and wondering if it was a distress call from one of the ladies inside. ‘Is everybody okay?’ he called, shining his torch around in an effort to locate whoever had instigated the metallic ‘bong’.

  ‘I’m up here,’ called Enid, desperate to distract him from looking around too rigorously downstairs. ‘Mrs Barrington-Blyss needs putting back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about,’ she reassured him, keeping the fingers of both hands crossed. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  ‘I’ll just take a quick look around down here then,’ he replied, and headed for the drawing room door. Being about his lawful business, he had no hesitation in switching on the light before checking the room and, behind the largest of the sofas, discovered Lady Amanda stretched out flat on the floor, Hugo’s sticks, one each side of her, aligned tidily with her body.,

  Giving her a smile and a polite wave, he switched off the light and left the room, checking next, the dining room. The most convenient (in more ways than one) door was that of the downstairs lavatory, and, on opening that, he found Hugo standing with his back to him, his hands on the low cistern and his head turned over his shoulder with the most innocent of expressions on his face.

  ‘Not interrupting, am I?’ asked the young policeman, in embarrassment.

  ‘Not at all,’ replied Hugo. ‘I’m just hiding in here.’

  ‘Good idea, sir. Wish I’d thought of it first,’ was PC Glenister’s somewhat puzzling answer.

  At that moment, Enid could be heard tripping down the stairs, her head a whirl of anxiety about being caught red-handed like this. Her look of inquisition at the PC was one that said she was about to face the rest of her life with a criminal record. ‘Everything all right?’ she croaked, almost cringing away from him as she awaited the arrests that would surely follow.

  ‘Everything’s absolutely dandy down here. Got her back to bed?’ he enquired, a hopeful expression on his face.

  ‘Sleeping like a baby again,’ Enid replied, wondering why events were not unrolling according to the doom-laden script she had written in her head.

  ‘I’ll get back outsid
e then,’ he informed her, then let a small smile curve his lips. ‘If you’re looking for the others, you’ll find Lady Amanda behind the sofa in the drawing room, and Mr Hugo in the downstairs cloakroom. Very fastidious man, Mr Hugo. Even wears rubber gloves to go to the lavatory, I noticed,’ he joked.

  Enid ignored this seemingly inexplicable remark, and merely looked relieved. In fact, her whole body slumped as she received the somewhat inexplicable news that he knew the others were there, but planned to do nothing about it. She might not be able to explain his reaction, but she could certainly appreciate it, and saw him out of the door with a feeling of disbelief. They were going to get away with it after all!

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Bit More Pumping is Required

  Breakfast was cancelled the next day at Belchester Towers, as was lunch, and brunch was declared to be the most appropriate meal, after such a late night and all the trauma that it had involved. They had managed to make a search of the house, with Hugo safely tucked away in the drawing room, keeping out from under Lady Amanda’s feet. Enid had even been able to join in, but, of a copy of the manuscript, or even notes pertaining to it, they had found no sign, and the night’s adventure had not even been discussed in the car back to the Towers.

  They all three retired straight to bed after arriving home, an air of dejection about the trio, who had had such high hopes of that night’s clandestine activities, so the first chance there was of any discussion, was at the brunch table the next day, and very late in the day, it was, too.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t we get carted off in handcuffs last night? We were caught red-handed, in someone else’s house, at an un-Godly hour, and we could have been up to anything. That young constable just made the most extraordinary comment, and treated it like it was an everyday thing for him, to find interlopers in strangers’ lavatories.’