by Rhys Bowen
“I will,” I said. “I’m sorry. It really was innocently intended. I’m a young woman trying to earn a living like everybody else in this city, you know. I thought I had found a niche and leaped in to fill it.”
“I’d stick to the more acceptable professions in future. All I can say is you’re lucky our man happened to pick up on that advert so quickly. Can you imagine what a field day the gutter press would have had if they’d come upon it first? The tart with the tiara? The Buck House brothel?”
He watched me wince at each of these epithets. I could tell he was rather enjoying himself.
“I’ve told you it won’t happen again,” I said. “And fortunately the press has not found me out.”
“All the same,” he went on slowly, “I think it might be wise if you left the city immediately. Take the next train to your home in Scotland, eh? Then if by any chance any nosy parker did stumble upon yesterday’s paper and called the number, they would realize that Rannoch House was empty and closed up for the summer and that there had been a mistake. We’ll brief the Times to verify that the telephone number was their error.”
He looked at me inquiringly. I couldn’t do anything but nod in agreement. He obviously had no idea that going home to Scotland meant facing a dragon of a sister-in-law who would want to know what I was doing landing on their doorstep with no warning. But I did see his point. I went to stand up, presuming the interview was at an end. Sir William put his pipe to his lip and took a long draw on it.
“One other small thing,” he said. “Do you happen to know a woman by the name of Mavis Pugh?”
“Never heard of her.”
“I see. Only yesterday evening a young woman was found dead on a byway close to Croydon Aerodrome. It appeared that she had been run over by a fast-moving vehicle—a motorcycle by the looks of it. We assume it was just a tragic accident. The lane was leafy and shady, and it was just after a sharp bend. Maybe she stepped out at the last minute and he didn’t see her. But he didn’t stop to report it either. And we’ve turned up no witnesses.”
I tried to keep my face interested but detached. I tried not to let Paolo come into my mind. “I’m very sorry for the woman, but I don’t see what this has to do with me,” I said. “I can assure you that I’ve never ridden a motorcycle in my life and was nowhere near Croydon Aerodrome last night, as the owner of a seedy nightclub can verify.”
“Nobody is suggesting you were,” he said. “I asked because her handbag was thrown across the road by the impact. Some of the contents wound up in the ditch. Among them was a half-finished letter, apparently to you. The writer was using a cheap ink and most of it had washed away but we could read ‘Lady Georgiana’ and the words ‘Older brother, the Duke of . . .’ ”
“How extraordinary,” I said.
“So if you don’t know this woman, we wondered why she was writing to you.” His eyes didn’t leave mine for an instant. In spite of his age, and he must have been over fifty, his eyes were extraordinarily bright and alive. “We wondered, for example, whether she might have been thinking of blackmailing you.”
“For what? My brother and I are virtually penniless. He at least owns the property. I own nothing.”
“The lower classes don’t think like that. To them all aristocrats are wealthy.”
“I can assure you that I am not being blackmailed by anybody. Was this woman known to be of the criminal classes?”
“No,” he said. “She was a lady’s maid.”
Then a memory stirred within my brain as I put together the words “Mavis” and “lady’s maid.” “Wait,” I said. “Was she by any chance in the service of Veronica Padgett, the famous lady pilot?”
“Aha.” He gave a smug smile. “Then you do know her?”
“I encountered her once, a few days ago at Croydon Aerodrome. She had come to meet her mistress and bring clothes for a party. Miss Padgett was cross with her because she was late. She pointed me out and said that Lady Georgiana could manage without a lady’s maid and she was thinking of following suit, so this young woman would have known who I was. But I didn’t have any direct communication with her.”
“You say her mistress was cross with her? Maybe she was writing to you to apply for a job.”
“Possibly,” I said. “But I got the feeling that Miss Padgett was just needling her, not really threatening to dismiss her. What does she say about it?”
“She was quite upset, actually. She was down at a house party in Sussex and she had left her maid in London. She had no idea what the maid would have been doing near the aerodrome when her mistress wasn’t planning to return to London for several days and had given her maid no instructions to leave the residence.”
“I wish I could help you, Sir William,” I said, “but as I just told you, I had no dealings with this person.”
“You’re a friend of this Miss Padgett, are you?”
“Not at all. I only met her once and then by chance. She happened to land her aeroplane at Croydon Aerodrome when I was visiting with friends. She knew one of our party and we went to drink a glass of champagne with her while she waited for her maid.”
“I see,” he said. There was a long pause. “Just an unfortunate coincidence,” he went on, “but it’s lucky that you’re leaving London, or this might turn into another whiff of scandal that we simply can’t allow.”
“Is that all?” I asked. I felt as if my nerves were close to snapping. Honestly, I’d done nothing wrong and I was beginning to feel as if I were a prisoner in the dock and the black cap might be produced at any minute.
He nodded. “Well, that seems to be that, then.” He glanced at his watch. “If we made a dash for King’s Cross, we might still catch today’s Flying Scotsman. It leaves at ten o’clock, doesn’t it?”
“Today’s Flying Scotsman?” I stared at him, openmouthed. “I will need some time to pack, you know. I can’t just up and go to Scotland.”
“Have your maid do it for you, and she can follow on a later train. Surely you have the bulk of your clothing at Castle Rannoch?”
Now I was feeling both angry and flustered. “Contrary to popular belief, all aristocrats are not rich enough to own a vast wardrobe. The few items of clothing I possess are with me in London.”
“But you can do without them until tonight. I’ll have my man drive you via Belgrave Square so that you can give your maid instructions and pick up the odd toiletry.”
“I have no maid at the moment,” I reminded him.
“No maid? You’ve been living in Rannoch House alone?” His manner implied that I had indeed been operating the suspected house of ill repute.
“I can’t afford a maid,” I said. “Which is why I’ve been trying to find work.”
“Dear me.” He gave an embarrassed sort of cough and tapped his pipe into the ashtray. “And I suppose I can’t expect you to travel by a slow train to Edinburgh, and the overnight Pullman into Glasgow won’t work then?”
“I can’t make an easy connection from Glasgow, nor expect our chauffeur to meet me there,” I said.
“Very well, it had better be tomorrow then. I’ll have my girl book your seat. And I can’t urge you strongly enough to talk to nobody in the meantime.”
“I presume you want me to telephone my brother to let him know I’m coming?” I said.
“Don’t worry, that’s been taken care of,” he said.
I felt myself flushing red again, wondering just what had been said. Would it be clear to all that I had been sent home in disgrace like a naughty schoolgirl? Sir William rose to his feet. “Very well, you’d better get going. Don’t answer the telephone whatever you do, and if you can draw the blinds and make the house appear to be unoccupied, so much the better. My man will call for you in the morning.”
Annoyance was gradually overtaking fear. This man was ordering me around as if he was my superior in the army.
“And if I choose not to go?” I demanded.
“I should have no alternative but to bring th
e matter to the attention of Their Majesties. I should hope you’d wish to spare them any embarrassment. Besides, I understand you are expected at Balmoral in the near future anyway. You are merely putting forward your arrival by a few days. Simple as that. Off you go then. Enjoy the grouse shooting, you lucky devil. Wish I could be up there instead of stuck behind this desk.”
And he gave me a hearty laugh, playing the benevolent uncle now that I was following his wishes. I nodded coldly and left the room with as much dignity as I could muster.
Chapter 6
Rannoch House
Still August 16
I felt as if I was about to explode as I let myself into Rannoch House under the watchful eye of the young constable. In truth I suspect that the anger I felt was a result of my embarrassment and humiliation. I just prayed that Sir William hadn’t revealed my gaffe to Binky and Fig. Binky would think it was a huge joke, but I could just picture Fig giving me that withering look and going on about how I’d let the family down and suggesting it was my mother’s inferior blood coming out again. This of course turned my thoughts to my grandfather. He was the one person I would dearly have loved to see at this moment because I needed a good hug. Belinda would be no use, even if she wasn’t currently in Paolo’s arms. She’d think the whole thing was screamingly funny. “You of all people pretending to be a call girl, darling,” she’d say. “The one remaining virgin in London!”
But my grandfather was not on the telephone and I didn’t think Sir William would take kindly to my gadding around on a tube train. So I packed the sort of clothes one needs in Scotland, then sat in the gloomy kitchen below stairs, sipping a cup of tea. At that moment the telephone rang. I jumped up but remembered the instruction not to answer it. A little later it rang again. Now my nerves were seriously rattled. Had the press twigged to me after all? Or was it a potential client who had discovered my advertisement in yesterday’s newspaper? I moved uneasily about the house, occasionally peeping through the closed blinds of the front bedroom to see if any reporters had stationed themselves in the square.
Then at about five o’clock there was a loud knock at the front door. I rushed to the bedroom window and tried to see who was there, but the front door is under a covered portico. It could have been Belinda of course, but the knock had somehow sounded mannish and demanding. It came again. I held my breath. If it was someone from Scotland Yard, then it was their own silly fault that I wasn’t answering the door. I was obeying instructions. I watched and waited and eventually I saw a man walking away from the house. An oldish man, not too well dressed. Then suddenly there was something about the walk I recognized. Forgetting all instructions, I rushed down the stairs, flung open the front door and sprinted down the street after the retreating figure.
“Granddad!” I shouted.
He turned around and his face broke into a big smile. “Well, there you are after all, ducks. You had me worried for a moment there. Did I wake you from a little nap?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I was instructed not to open the door. Come inside and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I almost dragged him back inside Rannoch House, glancing around for reporters lurking in the bushes inside the gardens. I know the gardens are private and require a resident’s key to enter, but reporters are notoriously resourceful and can leap iron railings when required.
“What’s this all about, my love?” he asked as I shut the front door behind us with a sigh of relief. “Are you in some kind of trouble? I suspected as much when that bloke told me you’d been to my house—the one day I was away, of course. Went on the annual outing to Clacton.”
“How was it?” I asked.
“Smashing. All that fresh sea air did a power of good to these old lungs. I felt like a new man by the time we came home.”
I looked at him critically. I knew his health hadn’t been good for some time and he didn’t look well. A stab of worry shot through me that I might lose the one rock in my life, coupled with a pang of regret that I wasn’t in a position to do more for him. I wished I could send him to the seaside for the summer.
“So what’s up, ducks?” he asked me. “Come and make a cup of tea and you can tell your old granddad all about it.”
We went down to the kitchen and put on the kettle while I told him the whole story. “Blimey,” he said, trying not to grin, “you do get yourself into a right pickle, don’t you? Escort service? High-class girls?”
“How was I to know?” I demanded hotly.
“You weren’t. Brought up too sheltered, that’s your trouble. But next time you have any bright ideas, you run them past your old granddad first.”
“All right.” I had to smile.
“Anyway, no harm done,” he said. “You’re lucky you got out of it as easily as you did.”
“I wouldn’t have if Darcy hadn’t been at the nightclub,” I confessed. “He stepped in and rescued me. And the bad thing is that somehow Scotland Yard got wind of this and they are shipping me off to Scotland posthaste, just in case any reporters stumble upon it.”
“That’s going overboard, isn’t it? What if a reporter did stumble upon it? You’d just say it was a poorly worded advertisement.”
“Scotland Yard is getting the Times to say the telephone number was an error. They think I’d be embarrassing the Crown.”
“No more than their own son is embarrassing them,” Granddad said. “Has he still got that married American woman in tow?”
“As far as I know. I must say the press is being wonderfully discreet about it. It hasn’t made the papers at all.”
“Because Their Majesties have requested it be kept hush-hush.”
The kettle boiled and I made tea while Granddad perched on a hard kitchen chair, watching me. “So you’re to be shipped back to Scotland, are you? To Balmoral or to your brother?”
“Castle Rannoch. My Balmoral invitation is not for over another week.”
“I can’t see your sister-in-law throwing out the red carpet for you.”
“Neither can I,” I said. “In fact I’m rather dreading it, much as I adore being in Scotland at this time of year.”
“Don’t you let her push you around,” Granddad said. “It’s your home. You were born in it. Your father was a duke, and the grandson of the old queen; hers was just a baronet who got his title for lending Charles the Second money to pay his gambling debts. Remind her of that.”
I laughed. “Granddad, you’re awful. And I believe you’re a bit of a snob at heart.”
“I know my place and I don’t claim to be what I’m not,” he said. “I don’t have no time for people who give themselves airs about their station.”
I gazed at him wistfully. “I wish you were coming with me,” I said.
“Now can you see me huntin’ and shootin’ and hobnobbing with the gentry?” He chuckled, and the chuckle turned into a wheezing cough. “Like I said, I know my place, my love. You live in your world and I live in mine. You go home and have a lovely time up there. I’ll see you when you get back.”
Chapter 7
The Flying Scotsman, traveling north
August 17, 1932
Going home. Excited and dreading it at the same time.
Lovely day. Bright and warm.
The next morning I sat in a first-class compartment on the Flying Scotsman as the countryside flashed past, bathed in sunlight. It was all very pleasant and rural, but my head was swimming with conflicting emotions. I was going home—back to a place I loved. Nanny still lived in a cottage on the estate, my horse was waiting for me in the stable, and my brother would be pleased to see me, even if Fig wasn’t. The thought of Fig clutched at my stomach. I wasn’t afraid of her, but it is never pleasant to know that one is not wanted. I wondered what Sir William had said to her. Would she know that I’d been sent home in disgrace?
Outside in the corridor I was conscious of a bell ringing and a voice announcing the first sitting for luncheon. Luncheon in the dining car was something I would no
t normally have allowed myself in my present impecunious state, but today I felt I deserved it. After all, for the foreseeable future I’d not be fending for myself, and someone at Scotland Yard had paid for my train ticket. I got up, glanced in the mirror to make sure I looked respectable then came out of my compartment into the corridor, almost colliding with a person emerging from the next compartment. He was a rather good-looking young man, tall, with blond hair, brilliantined into a set of pretentious waves, and wearing a sporty-looking blazer and slacks.
“Frightfully sorry,” he muttered, then he appeared to really notice me. His eyes traveled over me in the way that eyes usually traveled over Belinda. “Well, hello there,” he said in what I suppose was a slow, sexy drawl. “I say, what a lucky coincidence to find someone like you in the next compartment. Here was I, steeling myself for eight hours of boredom and the crossword puzzle. Instead I bump into a frightfully pretty girl, and what’s more, a pretty girl who appears to be alone.” He glanced up and down the empty corridor. “Look here, I was on my way to the cocktail lounge. Care to accompany me for a drink, old bean? One simply can’t survive without a gin and tonic at this time of day.”
Part of me was tempted to go with him; the other part was affronted at the way he had been mentally undressing me. This didn’t happen to me often and I wasn’t sure whether I should enjoy it or not. As always in moments of stress, I reverted to type. “It’s frightfully kind of you, but I was on my way to the dining car.”
“It’s only the first sitting. Nobody goes to the first sitting except for aged spinsters and vicars. Come on, be a sport. Come and keep me company with a cocktail. It’s a train, you know. The rules of society are bent when traveling.”
“All right,” I said.
“Jolly good. Off we go then.” He took my elbow and steered me in the direction of the cocktail bar. “Are you going up to Scotland for the grouse shoot?” he asked as we maneuvered unsteadily forward against the rocking of the train.