God Rob Ye Merry Gentleman (2 page)

‘I regret I have not set eyes on it, but I shall certainly keep a look out for it and restore it to you when it is found.'

‘Beechy, dearest,' asked Enid, approaching her husband from behind and making
him
jump for a change. ‘I just wondered if you'd seen or moved my engagement and wedding rings. I had to take them off because my fingers are getting a bit puffy…'

Beauchamp stared balefully at his wife's ever-expanding figure and wasn't in the least surprised that she had had to remove them; everything about her was puffy at the moment, and would continue to expand until their baby was born. ‘Only, I'm sure I left them on my bedside table, and they're simply not there anymore. I really can't think where else I'd have put them.'

‘Have you checked your jewellery box?'

‘First place I looked.'

‘And the bathroom?' If she'd had to employ the easement of a little soap, she might have put them down in there.

‘Already looked and, I must say, I'm absolutely foxed – and devastated, of course.'

Her husband's face assumed a thoughtful expression as he considered the number of things that seemed to have gone missing over the last few days. He himself, had, only yesterday, been unable to find a pair of rose-gold cufflinks that Lady Amanda had been kind enough to give to him in memory of his father.

‘I simply don't believe it!' This bellow from Lady Amanda's room brought both Beauchamps at a run, to see what catastrophe had occurred.

‘Your ladyship?' said Beauchamp interrogatively.

‘My silver chain-link bag. I'd particularly wanted to take it with me tonight for cocktails at the Alderton-Smythes', and I always keep it in the top drawer of my dressing table. Bally thing's gone: disappeared without trace. Whatever is going on around here? Have we got a kleptomaniac poltergeist, or what?'

‘I shall endeavour to ascertain. Have you not anything else that will suffice?' Beauchamp's mind was racing, and he was, therefore, at his most formal.

‘Oh, I have another one at the back of the wardrobe – if you'd be so kind. On the left-hand side behind the cashmere pullovers – but the chasing on the frame is not so fine. Damn and blast! I shall have to go with second-best, and I'll bet you anything you like that she turns her nose up at it.'

‘I'm sure your hostess would not be so ill-mannered,' commented the butler, his voice muffled by the stuff of the garments.

‘Should I, perhaps, check out the drawers of your dressing table, in case it got put away in the wrong place?' asked Beauchamp Minor.

‘Young man, how dare you…'

‘Here we are,' interrupted his father, withdrawing from the depths of the enormous old armoire. Is this what you require, your ladyship?' Daddy to the rescue, but it was a sufficient distraction to draw the furious lady's ire away from his son.

‘Thank you, Beauchamp, although it is not what I require, but what I am forced to use, given the outrageous circumstances. You are both dismissed.' The Lady was still in a filthy mood, which didn't lift until her hostess, sometime later, complimented her on the prettiness of her little bag.

‘A simple trifle which used to be my mother's,' she simpered in reply, as she preened herself at this unsolicited and unexpected compliment, good humour completely restored.

A FEW DAYS LATER…

At the carol service, Lady Amanda had magnanimously invited a few acquaintances round for seasonal cocktails. She thus found herself, at seven o'clock one evening, with a group of people that she only slightly knew cluttering up her library seating area, and she desperately trying to find a subject of conversation in which they could all join.

Notices that glasses were nearly empty and that her loyal Beauchamps were on duty at the door, she called out, ‘Major!' Immediately, an elderly man who had been quite deeply settled into one of the sofas struggled to his feet and asked,

‘How can I be of service, dear lady?'

Lady Amanda, who had had her beady eye on Beauchamp the butler's approach, whipped round her head and said, in a somewhat puzzled manner, ‘What? What are yer talking about?'

‘Major Ferguson, my dear Lady Amanda, at your service.' The old man nearly saluted.

‘No, no, not you,' she chided him. ‘I have two manservants with the same surname, so I refer to them as Major and Minor. Ah, Beauchamp, do you think you and Minor could refresh everyone's glass, for I feel a drought setting in,' and ending with a tinkling little laugh that sounded more like glass breaking, in her embarrassment. ‘Father and son, you see,'

Whilst the two men were engaged in mixing fresh jugs of cocktails, Lady Amanda tried for a fairly safe conversational gambit, one which would usually be outside her comfort zone but, given the average age of her guests, had decided that she would be on fairly safe ground.

‘Do you know, I think Hugo and I are getting rather forgetful in our old age,' she stated, with her fingers crossed in her lap – old age? That was not the case at all with her. Like a good-quality wine, she matured rather than becoming elderly – ‘We have mislaid several small objects just recently' – at this there were several pairs of alert eyes on her – ‘including Hugo's black leather gloves, which turned up in his mackintosh pocket,' she finished rather lamely. What had she said to cause such attention to suddenly fall upon her?

‘What else have you “mislaid”?' asked Major Ferguson, with such a pointed emphasis on the last word of his question that she could actually hear the speech marks. ‘And have any of them turned up like the gloves?'

‘Unfortunately not. Let me see,' she began, frantically searching her memory, ‘Great-Aunt Jemima's silver conductor's baton, ah, my favourite chain-link silver evening bag…'

‘And don't forget my gold lighter,' chimed in Hugo, suddenly tuning in to the conversation. ‘Oh, and a pair of rose-gold cufflinks that used to belong to Major's father.'

Major Ferguson instantly turned his head in Hugo's direction, then shook it and closed his mouth, as he belatedly realised his mistake.

‘Not to mention Mrs Beauchamp's engagement and wedding rings,' concluded Lady A.

‘How extraordinarily coincidental,' stated the major, followed by a sort of snorting noise that one would usually associate with a horse. ‘It must be contagious. I don't know what the devil I've done with m' gold cigarette case, and m' wife seems to have mislaid a pair of diamond earrings and matching dress clips.'

‘Ditto!' declared Audrey Alderton-Smythe, who had had to be invited due to her previous cocktail party at which Lady Amanda and Hugo were guests.

‘Knew a Captain Ditto once … strange name … in the army together. Now, where the devil were we stationed? Somewhere hot, that I do remember…'

At this point, Lady Amanda broke into Major Ferguson's rambling reminiscences, her voice dripping with acid, her eyes rolling in exasperation; a clear warning to anyone that they'd better zip it instantly. ‘Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Now, I seem to remember that Audrey was telling something rather pertinent to the subject we were actually discussing. Audrey?'

Without batting an eyelid at this rather abrupt interruption to her conversational flow, the woman picked up where she had left off. ‘I can't locate my Cartier watch, and Hubert' – she gestured to her horsy husband – ‘has simultaneously mislaid his Rolex.'

How vulgar to mention trade labels, thought Lady Amanda, as she turned her head towards Juniper, the major's daughter, who had just asked, ‘Changing the subject a little bit, did any of you have a visit from a delightful group of children who performed carols impeccably, recently?'

‘Indeed we did,' confirmed Hubert Alderton-Smythe, ‘and wasn't the little girl with the recorder sweet, giving them the right starting note. I noticed there was even a bit of sporadic harmony.'

‘Quite took me back to my childhood,' added Juniper wistfully, and for whom this must have been quite a feat of memory, as she was definitely well past her betroth-by date.

‘How unfortunate that they didn't visit the vicarage,' added the present incumbent of the local church.

‘Coals to Newcastle, Vicar,' explained Lady Amanda with a wicked twinkle in her eye, but her mind was racing. She'd have to have a bit of a natter with good old Beauchamp later.

‘Shall we all play sardines?' piped up Juniper, who hadn't seemed to grasp the fact that she was well into middle age and that playing the ingénue simply didn't suit her any more.

‘Can't even eat the things anymore with these damned ill-fitting teeth,' intoned a sepulchral voice from a distant armchair.

‘A little difficult for some of us, Juniper, as we're not so supple as we used to be. What about a rubber of bridge?' Lady A had provided a suitable diversion, and Beauchamps Major and Minor went to fetch the card tables and other necessaries for this plan. Beauchamp Major was gone longer than expected, and came back into the library with a puzzled expression on his face.

‘What is it, my man?'

‘I can't seem to find the silver bridge pencils anywhere, your ladyship. They're not where they're supposed to be in the bureau, and I can't lay my hands on them anywhere where I thought they could have been put in error.'

As his son had finished erecting the tables, Lady A called to him, ‘Minor?'

Major Ferguson was in there again, grasping the wrong end of the stick as usual. ‘Miner? Miner? We're not in Wales or County Durham. Have you lost your marbles, dear lady?' His short-term memory not being what it used to be, he had already forgotten the explanation that his hostess had given only a short while ago.

Ignoring this outburst completely, Lady A carried on as if he hadn't spoken, as the younger Beauchamp approached her. ‘I think you'll find sufficient propelling pencils in my desk, if you'd care to look, although some of them may only be silver-plated, they will at least work. We can hardly keep score with pencils that have disappeared. And perhaps you two could rustle us up a light supper with which to sustain our endeavours?' Both Beauchamps exited, Minor to Lady A's desk and Major turning towards the kitchen quarters.

A little later… ‘Snap!' yelled Major Ferguson, slapping down a seven of spades on to a seven of hearts.

‘Bridge, Major; bridge,' Lady Amanda adjured him.

‘Um,' he said, finger on chin and eyes staring upwards, ‘
Bridge Too Far
?
Bridge on the River Kwai
?' Good grief, the man now thought they were playing charades, and the only one currently in progress was his short-term recall.

But there was definitely a mystery here that needed looking into, his hostess thought, and it wasn't anything to do with the major's memory.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING…

After her breakfast, Lady Amanda made a number of telephone calls in the privacy of the music room, all seemingly innocent, but providing her with rather a lot of information. She then summoned Beauchamp Major to the morning room where they had a little tête-à-tête. Hugo would be with his newspaper at the library table, a habit he had formed because he often got the pages in a complete muddle and was unable to sort them out, so she and her butler should be able to converse undercover, as it were.

‘I did, actually,' replied Beauchamp to a very direct question. ‘And yes, I could. It was when he stepped slightly into the light from the portico to round up the stray children.'

‘That settles it,' she declared. ‘Hugo and I are going to have our main Christmas presents slightly early. Do you think you could bring them round to the front of the house when I decide the time is right? We must hasten, otherwise we'll find nothing. Time is of the essence, and we will need to judge this quite finely.'

‘I agree with your ladyship most wholeheartedly. Just say the word, and I shall bring them to the entrance of the house. Would you wish them wrapped in some way?'

‘Don't be silly. We're going to be using them the same day! We shall need some practice, otherwise there could be a nasty accident. But … hang on a minute, you could attach a large bow to each, if you have the time and patience.'

‘It would be my pleasure, your ladyship.' Beauchamp left the morning room with a big fat smile slapped across his chops. This would really demonstrate to his son how mad things could get in service at this particular house.

A WEEK LATER…

After breakfast, Lady Amanda, to Hugo's great consternation, asked him to follow her outside as he was to receive his main Christmas present a little ahead of time. ‘For I have a plan,' was all she said, most cryptically.

‘Why can't I just have it inside the house?' he asked, his lower lip sticking out in a pout, like a petulant child's.

‘Because when it is not being used, it will have to live in the stable block,' she replied.

‘It's surely not a blasted horse?' squeaked Hugo as he passed the main staircase, grabbing hold of the newel post to try to keep himself safe from this mad woman who seemed to have bought him an equine gift.

‘Absolutely not, Hugo. Don't be so ridiculous. You'll know what it is as soon as you see it,' she soothed him, gently prising his fingers away from the wood. ‘Now, come along and don't be so skittish.' Hugo, voicing all sorts of evil thoughts under his breath, shuffled along behind her, dreading what he would find outside.

Beauchamps Major and Minor had done their level best to make the items look festive, and had covered each with a pastel bedsheet, then attached a huge bow at the top. Lady A threw open the double doors with a cry of, ‘Ta-da!' and her arms thrown equally wide, the better to show off the gifts.

Hugo stared balefully at the pink and blue shrouds and declared, in disgust, ‘Not a new blasted tricycle? I never really liked the old one; came to hate it, in fact.'