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CHAPTER 1
Splendid! You have opened my book. You are curious about the mystery of the seven bodies and my part in it. If I am mistaken, forgive me. I bid you good day. Kindly close the book and turn to some memoirs of a less sensational character. I recommend Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, by my dear mother, Her Majesty, Queen Victoria.
If I am correct in my deduction, bravo! Let us plunge together into the plot. It began innocently enough one spring morning in the year 1890.
“So! You have resolved to go back to nature, Alix,” I announced with the air of one who has uncovered an intimate secret.
My pretty wife, the Princess of Wales, shot me a startled look. She was seated at the window in her sitting room at Sandringham. “What did you say, Bertie?”
“You are going back to nature. I perceive that you have finally decided to shed your steel appendage.”
She frowned. “Is this a riddle?”
“I mean your bustle, of course.”
“Bertie!”
“You can’t deny it. This afternoon you wrote to your dressmaker informing her that you propose to wear the new narrow skirts in future.”
She was open-mouthed with amazement.
Not without satisfaction, I said, “If you want to know how I made this discovery, I deduced it.”
“Deduced it?”
“I observed what I saw before me and applied the scientific principles of . . . deduction.” I paused, to let the word linger in the air for a moment. Then I directed my gaze across the room. “Upon your writing desk is a candle. The wick is blackened, but the candle is not much used. On a bright afternoon such as this, why should anyone light a candle except to melt sealing wax? I deduce that you wrote a letter. How simple when it is explained!”
Alix said, “There is more to explain than that.”
“Quite so. On the floor to your left is an open copy of yesterday’s Illustrated London News from which you have removed a page. The torn edge is clearly visible and so are the words ‘Opposite: the new straight skirt as designed by Monsieur Worth.’ So the chain of reasoning is complete. You saw the picture of the latest fashion from Paris and resolved forthwith to tear it from the magazine and send it to your dressmaker.”
She rocked with laughter. “Oh, Bertie!”
“Do my methods amuse you?”
“You couldn’t be more mistaken. I haven’t the slightest desire to wear straight skirts. They make me look like a beanpole. And I haven’t written a single letter all day. I was sewing. At some stage I dropped my thimble. I couldn’t see it anywhere on the floor so I lit the candle to look under the writing desk. Some candle grease unfortunately dripped onto the carpet, so I ripped a sheet from the magazine to clean it up before it hardened.”
“Alexandra, are you poking fun at me?”
“If you don’t believe me, look in the wastepaper basket.” I looked, saw that she was right and emitted a bellow of annoyance.
Alix contemplated her fingernails. “Bertie dear, do you think it is wise to persist in this notion that you can be a detective?
The question nettled me, I admit. I responded sharply, “Damnit, one small oversight and I’m branded as a failure. If I’d looked in the wretched wastepaper basket my chain of reasoning would have been different, altogether different. I’m forever being told to find intelligent pursuits and when I do I can’t rely on my own wife for encouragement.” I turned on my heel and marched out.
Alix knows that my temper is short and so is its duration. By the next post I received an invitation that altogether restored my humor. A grand battue at Desborough in October. Desborough—what a prospect! After Sandringham and Holkham, there’s no better shooting in the kingdom. Nine hundred acres in Buckinghamshire. Moreover Desborough Hall is one of the great houses of England, with Tudor banqueting hall, ballroom, gun room, chapel and ninety-odd bedrooms.
“I can’t resist it,” I told Alix over dinner. “I shall accept.”
“Who does the invitation come from?” she enquired.
“Lady Amelia Drummond.”
She shifted her head to see around the floral arrangement. “An invitation to shoot from a lady?”
“The widow of Freddie Drummond. Haven’t you met her?” I heaved a long sigh to signal sympathy for our prospective hostess. “Perhaps you don’t recall? She’s easily forgotten, poor soul, rather plain in looks, but making superhuman efforts to keep Desborough on the social map. One feels obliged to show support.”
“When did Lord Drummond pass away?”
“Last winter, in tragic circumstances. He was gored by a bull.”
“How horrid!”
“Yes, he was a frightful mess, they said. He lingered for six weeks, covered in bandages. Then one morning he sat up, uttered something rather vulgar and breathed his last.”
“I didn’t catch that. What did he mutter?” Sometimes dear Alix trades on her deafness.
“I think it was ‘Oh, bother.’”
“I don’t call that vulgar. I’ve heard far worse from Cocky.” Cocky is Alix’s pet cockatoo. She gave me a searching look and then took a spoonful of Scotch broth. In a few moments she casually enquired, “About what age would Lady Drummond be, Bertie?”
I hedged. “You could look her up in Debrett. I’m not much of a judge.”
“Younger than me?”
“Possibly.”
“Under thirty-five?”
“Alix, I haven’t the faintest idea. Is it important?”
“Conceivably.”
Later that afternoon she cornered me at my writing desk. From somewhere in the clutter of her rooms she had unearthed a copy of The Tatler with a studio portrait of Lady Amelia, a ravishing dark-haired beauty in a ball gown cut perilously low. “Bertie, I don’t know how you could describe her as plain.”
I replied somewhat obliquely, “Where do you keep these old magazines? It smells so musty it must be ten years old at least.”
“I looked her up in Debrett, as you suggested. She is still only twenty-seven.”
I shut the magazine and handed it back to her. “I suppose you’re going to try and stop my sport—just because the invitation comes from a young widow of tolerably good looks.”
My dear wife gave me an indulgent smile. “Not at all. When have I ever stood in your way? Of course you shall have your shoot. And I shall come too and offer some sisterly sympathy to Lady Drummond.”
“You intend to come?”
She smiled faintly this time. “One feels obliged to show support.”
And so the visit was set in motion. Francis Knollys, my private secretary, wrote to advise our hostess of my requirements: a suite comprising bedrooms for each of us, dressing rooms and sitting room. Also accommodation for our retinue of equerries, ladies-in-waiting, footmen, valets, loaders, coachmen, grooms and a member of the Household Police, whose duty it is to guard us from anarchists. Then the guest list had to be approved, a crucial matter as it ultimately turned out. Of sixteen names submitted, I struck out three immediately. If one is planning an agreeable week in the country, one doesn’t want to rub shoulders with people who have given offense in the past. Nor, if one wishes to shoot, is one obliged to stand comparison with all the best guns in the country.
We were left with thirteen names.
“Would you like me to join the party, sir?” Knollys knows my superstitious nature and volunteered at once.
“No,” I informed him. “We have more than enough men in this party. We must cross out someone else. Who have we got? Eight gentlemen and five ladies. The balance is fraught with disaster. Who is this reverend fellow, Humphrey Paget? He doesn’t sound like a shooting man.”
“The family chaplain, sir.”
“Ah.”
“He buried the late Lord Drummond.”
“The best day s work he ever did, from what I remember of Freddie. Better not object to a man of the cloth, I suppose. Who else have we got?”
“Marcus Pelham, Lady Drummond’s brother. I presume he’s there to perform the duties of host.”
“That’s as may be, but is he safe?”
“Safe, sir?”
“I wouldn’t care to stand with a man who isn’t safe.”
“I understand he’s an expert marksman, sir.” Knollys glanced at the list again. “Then there’s His Grace the Duke of Bournemouth, who lives on the neighboring estate.”
“Dear old Jerry. Good man. Hopeless shot.”
“Not safe, sir?”
“Not in the least.”
“Shall I strike him out?”
“Better not. The list is pretty undistinguished without him. I’ll make sure he’s well down the line from me.”
“Claude Bullivant. He’s a commoner.”
“Ah, but he’s a card. I like his sense of humor. This is getting damnably difficult.”
‘”There’s Colonel C.D. Roberts, V.C.”
“A V.C., do you say? That’s our man. Blackball him. We can do without a hero turning the ladies’ heads, eh, Francis?”
So the number was painlessly reduced to twelve. I had already run through the ladies’ names. Two I hadn’t previously met, which lent a certain relish to the week in prospect.
The summer ran its all-too-familiar course: Ascot, Epsom, Goodwood, Cowes. I anticipated the shoot in Buckinghamshire as a change from my customary October battue at Sandringham or Balmoral. And a change is what I got. A never-to-be-forgotten week.
CHAPTER 2
Those of my readers who haven’t seen Desborough for themselves may care to be informed that it is approached by a mile-long avenue of beeches. It is an extremely large, moated, brick-built Elizabethan mansion much extended by its eighteenth-century owners, who added a monstrous Palladian portico at the front and two extra wings. They also coated the Tudor brickwork in stucco, something I find as incomprehensible as putting a pretty face behind a yashmak.
We were graciously received. As custom decrees, our host and hostess, Lady Drummond and her brother Marcus, stood at the entrance flanked by their principal servants. Then in a charming, youthful manner Lady Amelia came running down the stone steps to greet us, bunching her skirt for ease of movement and affording glimpses of slender, white-stockinged ankles.
Beside me, Alix murmured, “No longer in mourning, it appears.”
The young widow curtsied and gave us her well-rehearsed greeting. She had a most engaging voice, with what I can only describe as a gurgle when she spoke certain sounds. “Welcome to Desborough, Your Royal Highnesses. I hope your journey was agreeable.”
“It is becoming so by the minute,” I said.
“Your suite is ready, sir, and your servants are installed.”
“Capital, my dear. What are the rules of the house?”
She looked uncertain how to respond, so I jocularly explained, “For example, my mother, the Queen, has a horror of smoking, and prohibits it absolutely indoors. At Windsor one evening, the German Ambassador, Count Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg, who cannot live without a cigarette, poor fellow, was discovered in his bedroom lying on the hearth rug in his pajamas, blowing smoke up the chimney. I hope I may light up an occasional cigar in your house without performing gymnastics.
I had brought the dimples briefly to her cheeks and now she found that winsome voice again. “No, sir, there are no rules.”
“No rules at all?” I arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t that rather reckless?”
She colored charmingly.
Then Alix remarked, “Rules are unnecessary when people know how to behave. Shall we allow Lady Drummond to show us to our rooms?”
Our hostess had spared nothing in making us welcome. Each suite was newly decorated, Alix’s in cornflower blue, mine in green and white stripes. Log fires were blazing merrily and producing pretty effects on the crystal decanters.
“When is dinner?” I asked Lady Amelia.
“At half past eight, sir. I would like to present my other guests at eight, if it pleases you.”
“I am sure it will please us enormously.”
When we were alone, Alix asked what time we were wanted.
“Seven,” I said firmly. It’s a constant battle with Alix. At Sandringham I have all the clocks permanently put forward half an hour.
She gave me a suspicious look. “That seems rather early.”
“It’s the country life. Everyone eats early and retires before midnight.”
The result was that we got downstairs at twenty past eight.
I spotted a few familiar faces in the anteroom: Sir George Holdfast, of Holdfast Assurance, and Lady Moira, his wife (good people, supporters of many charitable causes, but so staid); Claude Bullivant, once the most eligible bachelor in London; and dear old Jerry Gribble, the Duke of Bournemouth, hand on the shoulder of a suit of armor, chatting noisily to a pretty young woman in black velvet. Trust Jerry to lose no time, I thought.
Our hostess made a deep curtsey that Alix later described as theatrical. It didn’t offend me in the least. I seem to remember that Lady Amelia’s dinner gown was apple green, or it might have been pink. I retain a very clear picture of the corsage, which I am certain was of cream satin, cut distractingly low and decorated with pearl beads. She had her hair bunched high and adorned with a posy of white blossoms. I do like to see a lady’s neck and shoulders unadorned except for a few pearls.
Alix said pointedly that we ought to meet the Chaplain.
The Reverend Humphrey Paget demonstrably wasn’t one of those clerics who practice fasting as religious observance. He was “Broad” Church, if ever a man was. And we had more in common than that, for he claimed to be a sportsman, in spite of his girth.
“An angler, if I am not mistaken,” said I at once. “Did you land many trout today, Padre?”
His face was a study.
“Forgive me,” I said. “I have recently interested myself in the science of deduction.”
“Deduction, sir?”
“Yes. That distinct and even discoloration around the base of your heels suggests that you recently stood for some time in soft mud. Moreover, your toe caps, although splendidly polished, have several dull patches that could only have been made by splashes of water, say when a catch is landed. These indications, taken together with the knowledge that the River Ouse nearby is well stocked with trout, and the season ends on Saturday next, compel me irresistibly to the conclusion that you are a trout fisherman.”
He glanced down at the telltale shoes. Then cleared his throat. “Your acuteness of observation is truly remarkable. Your Royal Highness.”
