The Curious Incident at Claridge's

by R. T. Raichev

  ‘Yes. No—wait. Run my bath, if you don’t mind awfully.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Madden entered the bathroom and Sir Seymour heard the sound of running water.

  Odd-looking fellow—red-eyed—bleached—like a white rabbit, yes. Was he an albino? Would be bad manners asking him, he supposed. A bit disconcerting, having an albino steward run one’s bath. What did the fellow want to thank him for? Expected to be tipped, no doubt. Well, I won’t tip him, Sir Seymour decided. Too early in the morning. Fed up with unctuous flunkeys!

  When Madden reappeared several minutes later, Sir Seymour greeted him with a quotation. ‘Amat avidus amores miros, miros carpit flores.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘She avidly loves strange loves and picks strange flowers.’ Sir Seymour spoke petulantly. He felt a little annoyed that he needed to translate. ‘Strange flowers, Madden. That’s my sister Bettina. One never knows what she is up to. Like something out of that horror film we saw yesterday. She keeps changing her appearance. She doesn’t seem to be happy in her own skin. She calls it “experimenting”. You can go now, Madden.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting,’ Sir Seymour murmured. ‘Ha-ha.’

  Rising from his bed, he put on his dressing gown and slippers. He was in an excellent mood now. He couldn’t quite say why. His moods seemed to change fast. What was that joke? Down with Methuselah! Frightfully funny. He picked up the detective story he’d started reading a couple of days before. He enjoyed reading in his bath. A murder mystery gave you rather a cosy kind of feeling. He was extremely careful about what he read these days. No one would ever catch him reading books about the secret disgraces of advancing age, nor about Canadian women finding succour with the pastors of tough industrial estates. There were certain subjects he drew the line at … What was a ‘tough industrial estate’?

  Henley had told him not to overdo the hot baths. Henley was a fool. All right, there was a compromise—he’d make sure the water was not boiling hot. Lobsters hated boiling water. Ha-ha. The art of compromise. That was what his father had been frightfully keen on. Diplomatists usually were. Cautious fellows, frequently dull since they were always so circumspect. Never said anything amusing. Well, his father had been different. Far from dull. Quite a character, in fact.

  It was ten minutes later.

  The water, he reflected, was lovely. ‘I intend to put all my trust in you,’ Sir Seymour told the rubber duck. Jolly invigorating—these new bath salts—a mint-cum-angelica melange. Foam like whipped cream. He’d been extremely fond of whipped cream as a boy. Once his sister had pushed his face into a bowl of whipped cream, then laughed her head off. Made him look a fool.

  The bathroom was beginning to steam up. He let the book drop to the tiled floor. Couldn’t see properly. He had reached the denouement anyhow. Such a simple explanation. He lay back motionless, eyes closed in ecstasy, thinking of breakfast. Felt ravenous, actually. He would phone Saunders after breakfast. Change his will. Should be as simple as falling off a chair—

  He must have dozed off and slumped down a bit, his chin and then his lips submerging—the next moment he spluttered and gasped for breath. How easy it was to drown!

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me, you silly creature?’ Sir Seymour shook the rubber duck angrily. His heart was racing.

  Suddenly he saw somebody standing on the other side of the semi-transparent curtain. He squinted. He hadn’t heard the door open or noted the sound of footsteps. He was a bit deaf. Figure in orange. The bloody steward! Couldn’t quite see his face—why had the silly fellow put up his hood? It was against the regulations, they were not allowed to wear their hoods inside.

  ‘That you, Madden? What d’you want? Made me jump. You have no business to be here while I’m in the bath. What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ Sir Seymour cried as the figure in the orange habit started lifting the curtain.

  Gloves? Why was the fellow wearing black gloves?

  19

  Alibi

  The holiday season had started and at Heathrow Airport the bustle was quite incredible. They had had to come two hours before the flight—not one, as it had been. Penelope Tradescant looked at her watch: nine o’clock. She could do with some more coffee. She’d got up at some unearthly hour. Needed to check in first. How long the queue was!

  Her mobile phone rang. ‘Hold this,’ she told her companion and handed him her overnight bag.

  She held the phone to her ear. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Lady Tradescant? Oh dear. This is too dreadful!’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I am so sorry. It’s Wilfred Cowley-Cowper speaking. From Mayholme Manor—’

  ‘Who? Oh—Master?’

  ‘Yes, yes—oh dear—yes.’

  He sounded extremely flustered.

  ‘What is it?’ Vic whispered.

  ‘Sorry, can’t hear you very well,’ she said. ‘Has anything happened? Not Seymour?’

  ‘Yes! I am so sorry, Lady Tradescant, but I am afraid—it’s Sir Seymour—I am so sorry!’

  ‘Seymour? Is he ill?’

  ‘I am afraid I am the bearer of terrible tidings, Lady Tradescant. The worst possible news. Sir Seymour died this morning.’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Vic asked. ‘Who’s died?’

  ‘He died forty-five minutes ago. I called Dr Henley at once,’ the Master explained, ‘but it was too late.’

  ‘Oh, my God. What—but what happened?’

  ‘Sir Seymour didn’t feel frightfully well last night. He thought his fingers were a bit swollen—this might have nothing to do with it, mind! I suggested calling Dr Henley, but Sir Seymour insisted he was fine. Well, he died this morning. In his bath.’

  Penelope gave a little gasp. ‘In his bath!’

  ‘I am afraid so. It’s terrible. That’s where Travis—one of the stewards—found him when he brought him his breakfast. I am so sorry. This must be extremely distressing!’

  ‘It’s a shock … My God … Seymour … Was it a heart attack?’

  ‘Dr Henley is not sure, but he thinks it was a heart attack, yes.’

  ‘Poor Seymour.’ She looked across at the darkly handsome face of her companion. Poor lamb, he looked worried, quite distressed in fact. He had insisted on seeing her off. So sweet. She tried to give him a reassuring smile.

  ‘Dr Henley kept warning him against taking hot baths. There may be a PM. I don’t know. Dr Henley will need to conduct further examinations.’ The Master sounded quite choked. ‘It all seems to depend on how conclusive his findings are. He may need to ask for a second opinion, he says. It is all too dreadful for words. I was wondering whether it would be convenient for you to—’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I shall take a cab. Thank you for letting me know, Master. I am at Heathrow, as it happens. The airport, yes. I was on my way to the South of France—good thing I never got on the plane!’

  ‘The South of France!’ The Master seemed to find this particularly distressing. ‘I am so terribly sorry.’

  Poor poppet. He was clearly in a state of shock. Penelope had a soft spot for the Master.

  ‘Well, Vic, c’est la vie. First your mother, now Seymour. It’s awful, I know, though I can’t pretend I feel sad for either of them.’

  It was half an hour later. They were sitting in the back of a cab and he was holding her hand. He said, ‘They’ll think it is us, Penelope. They’ll think it’s us.’

  ‘I don’t see why they should. Seymour died of a heart attack. That’s what the doctor thinks.’

  ‘What if he drowned? He was in the bath, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s a possibility, but I don’t see how they could start imagining that we’ve got anything to do with it. At this point there’s no question of anyone suspecting foul play. The fact remains Seymour died shortly after eight o’clock this morning. The Master said so.’

&
nbsp; ‘Eight o’clock? Are they sure? Thank God!’ Vic gave a sigh of relief. ‘At eight o’clock we were in the cab on the way to Heathrow. Neither you nor I could have been at Dulwich, drowning your husband!’

  ‘Unless one of us managed to be in two places at the same time?’ She gave a little smile as she remembered the book of conjuring tricks she had given Seymour. ‘Perhaps I am not me?’

  ‘What—what do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, silly—of course it’s me! I shouldn’t be joking, I know, but I can’t help feeling very happy. I am free—and I am rich!’

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘I am not sure. Actually, my sweet, I don’t think that would be an awfully good idea,’ Penelope Tradescant said.

  ‘Why not? You love me, don’t you?’

  ‘I adore you.’

  ‘It’s interesting, the way you smile when you clearly don’t feel like smiling. I caught myself in my shaving mirror doing exactly the same thing the other day,’ Vic said. ‘It suddenly came to me. We are so similar!’

  ‘We are, aren’t we? Practically alike. That can be dangerous,’ Penelope said with mock gravity. ‘All the more reason why we shouldn’t get married.’

  ‘Arise, Sir Nicholas!’ It was the dark girl who said it this time and she laid the brush against his left, then against his right shoulder. They were at the same hotel, but the blonde girl wasn’t with them.

  Nicholas Tradescant went on staring down at his mobile phone. Did he feel sorry—sad? Well, no. He felt—nothing. He felt empty. A bit shaken up, that was all. He’d never loved his father. He had been caned by a servant at his father’s orders once. He must have been ten or eleven. He couldn’t remember the reason. His father had sat by and watched, while sipping pale sherry. He recalled his father’s words. ‘Well, Nicky, if you asked me nicely, the castigation could be cancelled.’ There had been a smirk on the servant’s face. Nicky had clenched his teeth. He hadn’t begged for mercy. He hadn’t screamed or sobbed. He had stood the punishment out, bloodied but Spartan in his silence. He had then walked stiffly and painfully to his room. He’d wished his father dead, he remembered.

  The dark girl put her arm around his neck. ‘What are you thinking about, Nicky? Aren’t you happy?’

  ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘We floated an electronically operated boat on the lake once. Many years ago. I was very excited about it, but my father got angry with me, I can’t remember the reason, but he told me to go back to the house. He then spent an hour playing with the boat all by himself.’

  ‘What a terrible thing to do! Poor Nicky. Well, your father is dead now and you are one of the richest men in England, aren’t you?’

  He asked the dark girl where the blonde girl was—did she have any idea?

  She shrugged. ‘She is a dark horse. Perhaps it was her who went and killed your father. She said she would, didn’t she?’

  ‘Actually it was you who said it.’ He gave a faint smile. ‘They don’t know the exact cause of death yet, but it looks like a stroke.’ He glanced down at his mobile phone. There was a message—from his aunt, of all people. What did it say? Rejoice! Rejoice!

  He shut his eyes. He had started feeling a little queasy.

  ‘I am pregnant and I am absolutely sure you are the father,’ the dark girl was saying.

  20

  Suspicion

  ‘Ah, Master. We meet again. This is terribly distressing,’ Bettina Tradescant said.

  ‘Miss Tradescant, my sympathies.’ The Master inclined his head in a ceremonious manner. ‘A most tragic occasion—’

  ‘Indeed it is. But we need to get these things in perspective. My brother was not exactly a young man. You may not be aware, but there was an awful lot that was wrong with him. An awful lot. Anxiety spells, depression, indigestion, insensitivity, general lack of judgement, deafness. His deafness was much worse than he ever admitted, did you realize? Seymour was terribly embarrassed about his deafness. Seymour was a tormented soul. Not at all what you and I would call a “happy man”, so, in a manner of speaking, this is a merciful release.’

  ‘Sir Seymour always said he found great contentment and peace at Mayholme Manor.’

  ‘Well, that was certainly the impression he chose to give.’ She shook her head darkly. ‘You didn’t know my brother as well as I did, Master. Seymour believed in sparing the feelings of people he didn’t know particularly well.’

  How and when she had heard the news, the Master couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was Lady Tradescant who had told her? But he had informed Lady Tradescant about her husband’s death only an hour and a half earlier—and Bettina Tradescant was already sitting in his study, wearing profound and rather extravagant mourning, like some Victorian widow! A long black dress with a high collar, black pointed shoes, black hat with two shiny purple feathers, black gloves and two golden crucifixes around the neck. How had she managed it? She must have moved with the speed of lightning. No—impossible!

  ‘I have an admission to make, Master. I have been here for ages. I knew of course what I would find, so I came suitably dressed. I am famous for my sense of occasion. I arrived at the crack of dawn and I sat in my car. I was quiet as a mouse. I drank coffee from my thermos flask and read Vanity Fair. The book, not the magazine. I have been reading it for the past twenty-five years. I admire Becky Sharp terribly. Such enterprise. I must admit I prefer the magazine, always useful to know what my rivals get up to, but I doubt if that would have been appropriate in the circumstances. My brother disapproved of what he termed “the world of fashion”. Incidentally, I had a mishap in your downstairs lavatory earlier on. I am sure your stewards have informed you?’

  ‘No, they haven’t.’

  ‘They should have. Something needs to be done about all those locks and knobs, otherwise one day you may end up with a fatality,’ she warned him. ‘Next time it will be one of your old buffers! I doubt if any of them has my kind of stamina. I do apologize if I strike you as a little brusque, but I had a bad night. I couldn’t sleep at all well, in fact not at all. One of my tangos nocturnes. When that happens I tend to lose my temper easily. Everything annoys me. I hope you will forgive me. I explained about the chill the last time we met, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I can’t function if I’ve got the chill. I simply can’t. When did my brother die exactly?’

  ‘Between eight and half-past eight this morning.’

  ‘I locked myself in your downstairs loo at about that time, now isn’t that most interesting?’ Bettina scowled. ‘You are sure Seymour didn’t snuff it in the small hours of yesterday morning?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ the Master said patiently. ‘You could ask Dr Henley.’ He gestured towards the portly man with the mottled red face, who had been sitting in an armchair beside the window, drinking coffee.

  ‘It isn’t so much a question of trust as of principle,’ she said obscurely.

  Dr Henley rose to his feet with some difficulty. ‘Miss Tradescant. How do you do.’

  Her leathery skin and somewhat darting eyes gave her an inhuman look, almost reptilian. Later on he was to describe her to his wife as a ‘crackling mass of unrelated forces’.

  ‘How do you do. One must observe the forms even when one is confronted with the greatest provocation, I am sure you agree? One must assume the appropriate social mask. Fail in that and chaos follows.’ For a moment Bettina seemed transfixed by the vague plume of steam that rose lazily from the doctor’s cup.

  ‘My deepest condolences.’ Dr Henley went on to say that Sir Seymour’s death would be a great loss to everybody who knew him.

  She gave a gracious smile. ‘I don’t seriously suspect the Master of deliberately withholding data, it is only that I felt the chill very strongly yesterday. I have had to live with the chill for most of my life. I first became aware of it when I was about four. That doesn’t mean I may not have had some sort of prevision. I consulted the Royal Society for Psychical Research about it once, years
ago, and they wrote back saying that prevision phenomena happen much more frequently than people imagine. They are awful frauds, mind, still one expects them to offer a competent kind of opinion.’

  ‘As it happens, I am intrigued by psychic phenomena,’ Dr Henley said. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Tradescant, how does the chill manifest itself exactly?’

  ‘It starts as a painfully persistent thought at the back of my head. Like a drill. It goes the moment I get confirmation. It simply disappears, as though it’s never been there, and then I am as right as rain. As light as a feather. The chill can be extremely demanding, almost like a living entity. Not a very nice living entity. It has tantrums. It craves attention. It snaps, it growls. No, I made that up.’

  ‘Fascinating. What will happen to it now?’

  ‘You mean now that my twin is dead?’

  ‘Yes. Will it—go away?’

  ‘I hope so. I have no idea. Only time will show. Strictly entre nous, I am sick and tired of talking about the chill in the mysterious and exclusive fashion in which Elijah might have spoken of his ravens. Well, it is refreshing to meet a man of science who is not primarily pig-headed. Doesn’t happen often, I assure you.’ She blew her nose. ‘Could Seymour have drowned?’

  ‘I can’t say until I have been able to examine the body properly,’ Dr Henley said. ‘I suspect a stroke or a heart attack. By the time I arrived, Sir Seymour had been taken out of his bath and one of the stewards had attempted artificial respiration, all in vain, sadly. Sir Seymour had high blood pressure. Those hot baths—I did warn him—’

  ‘I am sure you did your best, my good man.’ She shook her head. ‘I am afraid Seymour was always rather obstinate. Seymour never listened to people. He was singularly lacking in what is sometimes called the “imagination of disaster”. No question of a post-mortem then?’

  ‘I sincerely hope that will not be necessary,’ the Master said crisply.

  ‘It would look bad for you if there were a PM, wouldn’t it? I mean bad for the business, Master. It may cause chaps to think twice before they join this so-called “brotherhood”. I understand your fees are obscenely exorbitant. But perhaps there were no suspicious features, that’s why you are so damned relaxed about it? No signs of struggle—no bruises—broken nails—odd pigmentation—cracked vertebrae?’