Belchester Box Set

by Andrea Frazer

  ‘And for Mrs Enid and myself, I have made a Best Year, and I think I can say that, with all the changes that have taken place this year, it has been the best for a very long time.’

  ‘Well said, Beauchamp! Here’s to the Fearless Four, and to more detecting. It’s certainly put a spring in my step and some zest in my life! Cheers!’

  As they drank, there came a loud knocking on the front door, and Lady Amanda looked at the clock with astonishment. She had issued no other invitations for the day, and she was sure that Inspector Moody was probably still breaking pencils and climbing the walls in his frustration, at this very moment. Who on earth could it be?

  ‘I’ll get it,’ volunteered Enid. ‘You stay here and enjoy your cocktail, Beau … Beech … ham,’ she compromised on his name, not daring to choose one body of opinion over the other.

  At the door she found an elderly moustachioed gentleman in a bowler hat and camel hair coat who thrust a business card at her, and apologised for arriving without an appointment, but that he had to see Lady Amanda with the utmost urgency.

  Enid took the card, held it at arm’s length to read it, and said, ‘Do come in, Mr Bradshaigh.’

  ‘That’s Bradshaw!’ the man retorted, slightly miffed at this pronunciation. ‘Can’t you read, woman?’

  ‘I certainly can, Mr Bradshaigh, and ‘Bradshaigh’ it says on this card,’ and then she lost her temper. ‘I’ve had Cholmondley that’s pronounced Chummley, Crichton that’s pronounced Cryton, Featherstonehaugh that’s pronounced Fanshaw, and now you say you’re Bradshaigh, pronounced Bradshaw. What sort of schools did your forebears go to? I ask myself. Mine went to a place that taught them to read what was in front of them, and not miss out half the syllables, and then just make up the rest of them!’ and she stamped her foot in exasperation before she recovered her manners.

  ‘Follow me into the drawing room where I’m sure everybody will be able to read your name with complete accuracy,’ she replied in high dudgeon, and stomped off, a rather surprised Mr Bradshaigh trailing in her wake, totally flummoxed by Enid’s spirited outburst of confusion and anger.

  At the door, she announced, ‘There’s a Mr Bradshaigh who says his name’s pronounced Bradshaw, to see you. Here is his card,’ and with that, she sat down again and threw the rest of her cocktail down her throat defiantly.

  ‘Mr Bradshaigh,’ Lady Amanda welcomed him, with perfect pronunciation. ‘How nice to see you again, but it must be twenty years since we last met. What brings you here so unexpectedly? Mama’s solicitor,’ she added, so that the other three knew who he was.

  ‘It’s about your mother,’ he began, but was stopped in his tracks as Lady Amanda interrupted him.

  ‘But Mama’s been dead these twenty years. What business can you have, concerning her affairs?’

  ‘I know she’s not dead, Lady Amanda. I was in on the plot. How could she live abroad under another name without someone to manage her finances for her? I’ve been in the background all this time, quietly working away at her behest. But, to cut a long story short,’ he said, noting that Lady Amanda’s mouth was hanging open at the thought of someone else (other than Beauchamp) who had known about her mother faking her own death, when she herself knew nothing.

  ‘Whatever’s the man talking …’ began Enid, but was immediately silenced by one of Lady A’s glares, and her almost spat instruction.

  ‘Enid, you will repeat nothing whatsoever that is taking place in this room now, to another living soul, and if you do, I know where you live, and I will hunt you down and kill you like a dog. Do I make myself crystal clear?’

  ‘Absolutely, Lady Amanda. No word shall ever pass my lips. I swear on my mother’s life that I shall be mute for the rest of my life.’ Enid felt a shiver of genuine fear move through her body at Lady Amanda’s vehemence.

  Mr Bradshaigh, having remained silent while Lady Amanda set out her absolute demand for silence, continued without turning a hair, ‘To cut a long story short, your mother is on her deathbed with pneumonia and a chest infection, and I had a call from the hospital on my mobile to tell me that she was fading fast. If you want to see her again, alive, you’ll have to move quickly.’

  The mood in the drawing room grew sombre, as Lady Amanda asked, ‘Is that all you know?’

  ‘I know that she’s written a letter for you, in case you’re too late, and that she asked that you be informed that you’re not an only child. Either she, or her letter, will explain, when you get there.’

  ‘WHAT?’ Lady Amanda was on her feet. ‘Not an only child? I’ve always been an only child. Ever since I was born! Has the woman finally lost her marbles? Where’s the proof? Inventing phantom children like that! Well, it simply won’t do! I demand to know what’s happening!’

  THE END

  Read on for cocktail recipes from this story!

  AFTERWORD

  Cocktail Recipes

  White Christmas

  1 measure crème de banana

  1 measure white crème de cacao

  1 measure scotch whisky

  1measure double cream

  Shake and strain, sprinkle with grated chocolate

  Wobbly Knee

  1 measure Amaretto di Saronno

  1 measure Kahlua

  1/2 measure vodka

  3/4 measure coconut cream

  1 measure double cream

  Blend briefly with a glassful of crushed ice, sprinkle with grated chocolate

  Bumpo

  2 measures golden rum

  1 measure lime juice

  1 tsp caster sugar

  2 measures hot water

  Add to glass, dissolve the sugar. Dust with nutmeg

  Hopeless Case

  1 measure sloe gin

  1/2 measure peppermint schnapps

  3 measures cold cola

  Add to ice-filled glass. Garnish: lime slice

  Best Year

  1 measure vodka

  1/2 measure blue curacao

  1/2 measure Licor 43

  11/2 measures pineapple juice

  1/2 measure Rose’s Lime Cordial

  Shake and strain into glass filled with broken ice

  Waste of Time

  1 measure Midori

  1 measure white rum

  1/2 measure amaretto

  2 measures pineapple juice

  Prepare 2 glasses

  Glass 1: rim with grenadine/caster sugar, add cherry on stick. Garnish: fruit in season.

  Glass 2: plain, ungarnished. Shake and strain into glass 2.

  Serve both!

  Snowballs and Scotch Mist #3

  Prologue

  New Year’s Eve

  Lady Amanda Golightly, together with her dear friend Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, entered the hospital in Monte Carlo where her mother, Lady Edith, lay gravely ill, at the fag-end of her life. Hugo’s face was full of concern, but Lady A’s was set in grim determination. As they reached Lady Edith’s hospital bed, the nurse slipped discreetly from the room, closing the door softly behind her. Lady Edith, who had faked her own death twenty years earlier, smiled up at her only daughter beatifically, sighed, and departed this world to a place where it would be a very long time before her only offspring could find her again.

  ‘I think she’s gone, old girl,’ Hugo said, keeping his voice soft and solicitous. He didn’t like overt displays of emotion and he hoped Lady Amanda would be able to act with dignity, given the circumstances. She didn’t!

  ‘Wake up, you evil old witch!’ she hissed, grabbing her mother’s nightie and lifting her bodily from the bed to give her a good shaking. ‘You can’t just send me a message that I’m not an only child, then pop off. I need to know what the hell you meant by that message. How could I not be an only child? I always have been. What did you mean, you secretive old hag?’

  ‘Manda, I think you’d better put your mother down. She’s passed over: she’s not going to tell you anything now.’

  ‘She’s gone on purpose, just to spite m
e. I need to know what she meant. How am I not an only child?’ Lady Amanda’s voice had risen in volume, and attracted the attention of the nurse who had just left.

  Hearing footsteps, Hugo pulled at her fingers to release their grip on her mother’s nightgown, and led her away from the bed. ‘There’s someone coming, old thing. Best to act with dignity, in the face of tragedy,’ he counselled her.

  ‘Tragedy?’ she said in a furious whisper. ‘If I don’t find out what the old bag meant, I’ll kill the messenger and consult a medium to confront her; you see if I don’t. I must know!’

  ‘I have a letter here that your mother requested be given to you, should you arrive too late to speak to her. I don’t know if she’s up to conversation,’ said the nurse, from just inside the door, an envelope in her hand.

  ‘The only conversation she’ll be having is with St Peter, trying to persuade him to let her through the pearly gates, after everything she’s done in her devious life,’ spat Lady Amanda, still in a fury. ‘She’s dead!’

  ‘My sincerest condolences on the loss of your mother, Lady Amanda. We’ve all become very fond of Lady Edith in the short time she has been with us,’ intoned the nurse in a sepulchral tone.

  ‘Condolences be damned! Give me that blasted letter, and get on with making the funeral arrangements. I shan’t need her body repatriated, as that would make life rather complicated for me, so if you’d just kindly arrange a cremation and send me on her ashes along with your bill, I should be very grateful.’

  Lady A’s mood had tempered slightly at the sight of the envelope which would, no doubt, contain the information on why she wasn’t an only child. With her hand held out, she tried an ingratiating smile, but in Hugo’s opinion, it didn’t come off, and looked more like an evil leer.

  Hugo decided it was time he took over. ‘If you would just give Lady Amanda the envelope, we’ll get out of your hair. I have a card here, with the details of where we’re staying, but I expect we’ll be off to good old Blighty tomorrow, so I’d better give you details of how to contact her there.’

  ‘Blighty? Where is this place called Blighty? I have never heard of it.’ The nurse was confused. Some words are inexplicable, if one doesn’t know the root or the usage.

  ‘We’ll be in England,’ Hugo added, hoping this was explanation enough and, grabbing Lady Amanda’s handbag, which she had dropped on the bed in her fight to resuscitate her mother, he extracted a card and handed it over, along with the one he had picked up before they’d left the hotel.

  Back in lady’s Amanda’s hotel room, she sat and fumed on the bed, as she re-read the letter her mother had left for her, for the fifth time.

  ‘I simply can’t believe it!’ she stormed. ‘It can’t be true! It’s impossible! This must be some kind of a last sick joke on her part.’

  ‘There are details in there that tell you how to get a copy of the birth certificate. If there’s a birth certificate, then it must be true and you’re going to have to believe it, whether you want to or not,’ Hugo told her, getting a little fed up with her raging at what was obviously the truth.

  ‘But Hugo,’ she countered, ‘How the hell am I going to live with the fact that Beauchamp is my brother – or, at least, my half-brother? That’s just mad!’

  ‘Mad, but true. You’ll have to tell him, of course, although knowing Beauchamp, he’ll already know all about it.’

  ‘Bugger!’ snorted Lady A and went over to the drinks cabinet to pour herself a very large brandy.

  Chapter One

  Two weeks later

  ‘Oh, Lord!’ exclaimed Lady Amanda Golightly, holding a stiff invitation card that had just arrived in the post, in her hand. ‘Blast! Damn! Poo! Well, I simply shan’t go. I can’t face it again, so I shall refuse.’

  ‘What’s that, Manda?’ asked Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, her elderly friend. ‘Where do you refuse to go? What can’t you face?’

  ‘It’s the blasted McKinley-Mackintoshes. They’ve invited me for Burns’ Night. I don’t know; my grandmother’s sister marries into the family, then her daughter marries one of her McKinley-Mackintosh cousins, and suddenly we’re close kin. My mother put up with it, but I never have, and I won’t now.

  ‘I haven’t been up there since before Mama died for the first time, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go again – not to that draughty old castle right in the middle of hundreds of acres of Mac-nowhere.’

  ‘Is that the Mac-nowhere in Scotland?’

  ‘Where else?’ asked Lady A, crossly.

  ‘And for Burns’ Night, you say?’

  ‘Are you getting hard of hearing, Hugo? Of course it’s for Burns’ Night.’

  ‘So you’ve been invited to a castle in Scotland for Burns’ Night?’ Hugo persisted.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you? That’s what I’ve been complaining about, isn’t it? Are you sure you’re not losing your marbles?’

  Ignoring this last disparaging remark, Hugo replied, ‘Oh, Manda; I’ve never spent a Burns’ Night actually in Scotland. And in a castle too. Please say yes and take me with you as your guest. Please, please say you’ll accept.’ Hugo had always been very susceptible to the skirl of the pipes.

  ‘Oh, really, Hugo, you can’t be serious! You want to go all that way, in January, to the wilds of Scotland, just for a haggis dinner?’

  ‘Pretty please, Manda. I’m getting on a bit now, and if they invite you again next year, I might be dead, and never get the chance to do it.’ Hugo was adept at emotional blackmail when he wanted something badly enough.

  ‘Don’t say that, Hugo! And you really want to go, do you?’ Lady Amanda was astounded by the light of enthusiasm in his eyes, and not willing to contemplate a life without his company now, decided she’d better think twice.

  ‘More than anything. For me. Just this once.’

  ‘I capitulate, but you’ll owe me big time for this one,’ she replied, with a wince at what now lay ahead of them.

  ‘Will there be a piper? And an address to the haggis? And Scottish country dancing? And … maybe some sword dancing?’ he asked, as eager as a child promised an esoteric treat.

  ‘Oh, there’ll be all of that, and more. There’ll be long, cold, stone passageways with real torches flaring along their length, and deerstalking, although the only thing shooting these days are cameras. There’ll be gamekeepers and ghillies all over the place, and absolutely everything will be covered in tartan, both dress and hunting.’

  Hugo rubbed his hands together with glee, just before Lady A exclaimed, ‘Damn and blast!’

  ‘What is it now, Manda?’

  ‘We’ve apparently got to bring our own butler/valet and lady’s maid. Whatever am I going to do about a lady’s maid? I’ve never had one, and I don’t intend to start a habit like that so late in life.’

  Hugo, noting the ‘we’ve’ with satisfaction, suggested, ‘What about roping in Enid? She’d probably be game for it. Get it? Game? Scotland? Deerstalking?’

  ‘Hugo?’

  ‘Yes, Manda?’

  ‘Shut up! But you’re right. She’d be perfect. I’ll get Beauchamp to collect her, so that I can get her exact measurements, then I’ll make a call to Harrods and have them send something down. Beauch … aargh!’

  ‘Yes, your ladyship?’ A tall, impeccably garbed figure had suddenly appeared at her side like magic. It was taking some time to get used to the fact that her butler and general factotum was also her half-brother, but she was dealing with it as best as she could.

  Neither could see any good reason to change the status quo, as they were both perfectly content with the way their lives ran, but sometimes it gave Lady A a strange feeling, when she asked – or told – him to do something, then remembered that he was, in actual fact, kin.

  ‘I’ve told you before not to pad about like a cat. You must’ve taken years off my life over the years, just turning up like that, when I’m about to call you.’

  ‘Sorry, your ladyship. What can I get you?’ Beauc
hamp’s voice was exactly as it had been before Lady A had known about their blood kinship, but that was probably because he had known the truth for most of his life, and had just kept it to himself.

  ‘Enid, is what you can get me. Could you just run into Belchester and bring her up here? I want to measure her for a lady’s maid’s uniform.’

  ‘Is she by any chance going into service, your ladyship?’ Beauchamp asked, a little perplexed at this request.

  ‘Sort of, but I’ll explain all when she gets here. If she asks, just tell her there’s a little holiday in the offing.’

  ‘Yes, your ladyship. Will there be anything else?’

  ‘Not for now, but when you get back, we’ll all have a little cocktail to give us a chance to discuss arrangements.’

  ‘The McKinley-Mackintoshes’ for Burns’ Night?’ queried the manservant, a knowing glint in his eye.

  ‘No names, no pack-drill, my man. Now, the sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back, and we can all have a lovely little chinwag about it. But not a word to Enid until she gets here. I don’t want her to get wind of what’s in the air until it’s a fait accompli.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want her to suddenly have another engagement that makes it possible for her to wriggle out of it. You just want a chance to bully her before she knows what’s coming,’ commented Hugo, tapping one side of his nose with a forefinger.

  ‘Exactly!’

  When Beauchamp had gone off on his mission, Hugo became lively again, and asked, ‘Can we have tartan, Manda? Please. I’ve always fancied myself in a kilt.’

  ‘We can, but you’ll have trews and be done with. I have no desire whatsoever to be faced with your scrawny old legs every hour of the day,’ she replied, waspishly. ‘And I shall have a long skirt and one of those over-the-shoulder shoulder sash-cum-shawl thingies. I can order those, with accurate measurements, from a little place my old friend, Ida Campbell, uses in Scotland. She’s so clan-crazy she’s even got tartan carpet; makes me feel quite ill after a while, so I don’t visit often.’