Gentlemen Formerly Dressed (4 page)

W
ilfred Sinclair was not a member of the small but exclusive gentlemen's club, Watts, in London, nor was he ever likely to be invited to join. Although the Sinclairs had long been counted among the colonial elite, the Bunyip aristocracy was not the stuff of Watts. Even so, the elderly steward was polite and helpful.

“Shall I reserve three places for luncheon, sir?” he asked, glancing into the dining room. Most of the places around the long table, which
ran down its centre, were already occupied with men in white tie and tails, all speaking with unnecessary volume. The boisterous, all male gathering reminded Rowland of boarding school dinners. Having no particular wish to revisit those years, he had never appreciated the attraction of gentlemen's clubs.

“No, thank you, George,” Wilfred said, raising his eyebrows as a dinner roll was flung across the table to hoots of laughter. One of the diners began to crow like a cockerel and the others clucked in reply. “Lord Pierrepont is expecting us, but we don't plan to stay long.”

“Very good, sir. Perhaps you'd like to take a refreshment while I call for someone to take you up to the suite.”

“That won't be necessary, George. We'll go up ourselves directly.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Wilfred motioned his brother towards the sweeping staircase that led to the upper floors.

“Pierrepont can be a slippery sod,” he warned quietly as they made their way to the second floor suites that were reserved for members. “He's a self-important egotist, in desperate debt, but he is well-connected and, what's more, his first wife was German. He'll be very happy to think the worst of them.”

Rowland nodded.

“Avoid mentioning those friends of yours,” Wilfred went on. “Pierrepont's a Tory… he has no time for socialist sentimentality and he'll have no time for the crowd you insist on moving with. It will, quite understandably, cause him to distrust you. Do not mention that you think you're some kind of artist.”

“Very well,” Rowland said tersely.

Wilfred glanced at him. “Pierrepont cares very little about what happens to German Communists so don't go bleating about how they're being badly treated. He won't give a toss. Your best hope is
to demonstrate that the Nazis are not restricting their attacks to the leftist rabble… to show him what could happen to one of us.”

Rowland's eyes darkened.

Wilfred stopped. “Rowly, if you are to have any slim hope of achieving anything, convincing anyone, you must curb your temper. This, dear brother, is the politics of diplomacy. Despite appearances, it is not necessarily a team sport.”

Rowland rubbed his hand through his dark hair. He exhaled. “Fine. Let's get this over with.”

“Rowly…”

“Really… I'll be charming…”

“See that you are.” Wilfred rapped his knuckles on the door to Pierrepont's suite.

There was no answer.

Checking his pocket watch, Wilfred knocked again.

This seemed to prompt a response. The female voice was noticeably agitated. “No… No… don't come in… Oh, my God! My God!”

Both Sinclairs hesitated.

“Are you sure this is the right suite?” Rowland asked.

“I called on him here yesterday,” Wilfred replied.

“Could he be…?”

Wilfred shook his head, disgusted. “Quite possibly.” He turned to go.

But there was something about the woman's voice. Rowland tapped again.

“Madam, are you all right?” he called through the door.

Sobbing. Hysterical screaming wails.

Immediately Rowland tried the handle and, finding the door unlocked, pushed it open.

The sitting room seemed undisturbed. There was a crystal tumbler, half-filled with brandy, perched on the plush arm of a club seat and the secretaire was open, but otherwise the room was ordered and neat.

Rowland glanced at his brother. Wilfred gathered himself grimly, and they followed the wailing through to the adjoining bedroom.

Barely through the doorway, they faltered.

“Bloody hell!” Rowland murmured.

They stared speechless. A man lay on the bed. Rowland could tell it was a man only because the frilled nightdress was pulled up above his waist to reveal those parts of him that were unmistakably male. His face, frozen in some final grimace, was made up like a woman's and a curly wig sat askew on his head. Whatever the original colour of the lace on the nightdress, it was now red… blood-soaked. One of the man's hands was clawed around a sword, which had impaled him to the bed, as if he had been trying to remove it before he died.

A young woman, who seemed barely out of adolescence, stood by the body. She screamed when she saw the Sinclairs, clasping her cut and bloodied hands to her breast and recoiling in terror.

Rowland waited for his brother's lead.

Wilfred spoke evenly, sternly. “Miss Dawe,” he said. “It's Wilfred Sinclair… we met yesterday. This is my brother Rowland.”

The young woman stopped screaming and, once reminded, she seemed to recognise Wilfred. “How do you do?” she choked before she crumpled by the bed, crying.

Wilfred let her be. He motioned Rowland aside. “I'm going to fetch help. Lock the door behind me and admit no one till I return.”

“What?”

“Rowly this is Alfred Dawe, the Viscount of Pierrepont. That he is dead is difficult enough without the rest of this getting out.”

“But…”

“Just stay here and keep Miss Dawe calm if you can. Give her some brandy. I shouldn't be long.”

Given no other choice, Rowland did as his brother asked, though he did wonder fleetingly if he'd just bolted himself in with a murderess. He poured a generous brandy for the young woman who he coaxed into the sitting room. He put down the glass so that he could retrieve a handkerchief from his pocket.

“We will have to find you a doctor,” he murmured, glancing uneasily at the bloody handprints on the bodice of her dress.

She wrapped the monogrammed square of cloth around her right hand, which was the more seriously cut.

“How did you hurt yourself?” he asked gently.

“How did you?” she snapped, then seemed almost immediately regretful. “I was trying to get the sword out… so I could cover him up. I didn't want anyone to see him like that.” She laughed harshly, maniacally. “You see, the man in the negligee and lipstick is my uncle.”

At a loss as to how to comfort the girl, Rowland passed her the glass of brandy. She grasped it in two hands, both shaking, and lifting the tumbler to her lips, she downed the fortifying liquid in a single swig. She finished gasping.

There was knocking on the door and a shout through the keyhole. “I say, is everything all right in there? The chaps and I heard the most frightful racket… Bunky? Are you all right, old bean?”

Rowland pulled his arm out of the sling, struggling out of his jacket to place it around the shaking girl's shoulders. He poured her another brandy, ignoring the shouts of, “Hold on, Bunky, we're
coming!” and the feeble thumps and groans as someone tried to force the door open.

“Are you Bunky?” Rowland asked the young woman, hoping Wilfred would hurry.

“Gosh, good heavens, no… Bunky is in there,” she added pointing at the bedroom. “I'm Allie… Allie Dawe.”

“Rowland Sinclair, Miss Dawe. My condolences.”

“Yes.” Her eyes welled again. “Oh my God!”

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, glancing anxiously at the suite door which seemed to be taking a battering now.

“I came in this morning to start work…”

“Work?”

“Uncle Alfred was kind enough to provide me with gainful and respectable employment as his private secretary when my father passed away. I came in through the tradesmen's entrance because the club doesn't allow women, you see. I let myself in and I found… oh my God!”

Another commotion at the door. This time it was Wilfred's voice. “Rowly, open the door.”

Rowland did so, relieved. A crowd had assembled in the hallway: Wilfred; the steward, George; two uniformed policemen, another two in plain clothes; and half-a-dozen inebriated aristocrats who had risked life and lunch to come up from the dining room, one of whom looked distinctly unwell after having repeatedly charged the door.

Wilfred led in the policemen and the steward, and shut out the club's esteemed but intemperate members. The plain-clothes men introduced themselves as Asquith and Entwhistle. Entwhistle was from Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police made famous by Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes novels. Asquith did not say in what capacity he attended the crime scene,
but Rowland guessed he was with the civil service in some role to which Scotland Yard deferred.

While the uniformed constables seemed shocked by the scene of Lord Pierrepont's demise, Entwhistle merely sighed, licked a pencil's lead and took notes. Asquith looked irritated and weary. They conferred occasionally with Wilfred but generally ignored both Rowland and the steward.

Allie Dawe drank a third and then a fourth glass of brandy after which she was less than coherent.

“Rowly, would you escort Miss Dawe home?” Wilfred asked when the young woman began to sing mournfully. “I suspect she is… tired.”

“Don't you need—” Rowland began.

“We have your details,” Entwhistle said as Allie Dawe broke into a rendition of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”. “Best get the young lady home if you don't mind, sir.”

“Not at all,” Rowland replied, grabbing his hat from the mantel.

“There's a motor car waiting for you. Just tell the driver who you are,” Wilfred added.

“Would you mind using the rear entrance, sir?” asked the steward. “I wouldn't want to upset the members. We're very strict about ladies being on the club's premises.”

“One of your members has just been impaled in a frilly nightie,” Rowland replied. “I would have thought, in the circumstances—”

The steward shook his head firmly. “Regardless, 'tis club rules, sir.”

“Rowly,” Wilfred warned.

Rowland relented. George was, after all, just doing his job. He offered his uninjured arm to the bereaved Miss Dawe who took it, giggling, as she belted out “Onward, Christian Soldiers”. As they
left the suite she lowered her voice to a hum, tiptoeing towards the back stairs though she stumbled often enough to render any stealth useless. Rowland was beginning to quite like Allie Dawe.

A gleaming black Rolls Royce waited near the police cars, as Wilfred had promised. The portly chauffeur conveyed them discreetly away without so much as an improperly curious glance at, let alone a question about, the young lady with bloody hands leaving the scene of a crime.

Allie lived with her mother and several small fluffy dogs in a terrace in Belgravia. Mrs. Dawe was, at Rowland's guess, in her forties, an only slightly faded beauty with a refined constitution. She took one look at her daughter's bloodied hands and promptly fainted. Fortunately, there was a housekeeper about—a stout, calm and capable matron who said little but acted swiftly. She dutifully assisted Rowland who, one armed, was ill-equipped to hold up both women.

He settled Allie on the chaise while smelling salts were fetched for her mother. When Mrs. Dawe had been revived, the housekeeper attended to Allie's injured hands with iodine and tight-lipped disapproval. Rowland introduced himself then.

“I do beg your pardon, Mr. Sinclair,” Mrs. Dawe said frostily, glaring at her daughter. “It is not my habit to faint, but I am not accustomed to strange men bringing my daughter home intoxicated and bleeding in full view of the neighbours! Whatever will your uncle say, Allison? I demand to know the meaning of this!”

Allie started to cry again, and so Rowland found himself left to explain to her furious mother that Alfred Dawe was dead and that Allie had cut her hands trying to remove the sword from his lifeless body.

Mrs. Dawe fainted again.

The housekeeper threw up her hands and glowered at Rowland. She retrieved the smelling salts muttering.

“How are your hands?” he asked Allie quietly as her mother was revived for a second time.

She showed him. The cuts were long but not as deep as he'd first thought. “I don't need this anymore,” she slurred, handing him his very bloody handkerchief. “So thank you very much… you've been most kind.” She looked up at him with smiling glassy eyes. “You're really rather handsome, Mr. Sinclair… I don't know why I didn't notice before.”

Rowland smiled. “I suspect most people look significantly better after you've had a few stiff drinks.”

She sighed. “Do you want to go dancing sometime?”

Rowland laughed. He handed her his calling card. “I'm staying at Claridge's if you need to contact me. I should probably go.”

He glanced back at Mrs. Dawe who was just coming out of her faint, murmuring, “Bunky… dear Bunky… whatever shall we do without you?”

“I am sorry I wasn't more tactful with your mother.”

Allie giggled. “You wait till I tell her that Uncle Alfred was wearing her nightie!”