God Save the Queen! (2 page)

Less than half an hour later, Sir Henry showed her Gossinger’s remarkably fine collection of eighteenth-century silver, which was displayed in glass cases in the former buttery. He assured her that Hutchins, the butler, was responsible for the silver’s cleaning and of course she would not be expected to so much as dust this room were she to accept his offer and make Gossinger her home.

Admittedly, it wasn’t a lengthy courtship. But times have changed since Lady Normina was betrothed before she was fully out of the womb (she was a breech birth) to Thomas Short Shanks in 1172. Emotion may have wrought Sir Henry more than usually indistinct, but Mabel Bowser had no trouble making it crystal clear that she would marry him without waiting to get her best frock back from the cleaners.

The wedding took place several weeks later at St. Mary’s Stow. It was a tastefully small affair with only Sir Henry’s nephew Vivian and Miss Sophie Doffit, a third cousin who strongly resembled the Queen Mother, in attendance. It didn’t do, of course, to count Hutchins, his seventeen-year-old granddaughter Flora, and Mrs. Johnson, the current housekeeper, seated respectfully at the back of the church. Mr. Tipp, the elderly stable lad, didn’t come because someone had to stay behind in case burglars stopped by and took the huff at the lack of hospitality. And Edna couldn’t come up from Bethnal Green to witness her sister’s triumphal walk down the aisle, because she was in hospital having an operation for piles, as she insisted on calling them. But that was all for the best. Edna would have had trouble saying the minimum and trying to look educated.

With nothing to cast a blight except a fleeting regret that she had not married Sir Henry when she was of an age to provide him with a son and heir, the fledgling Lady Gossinger had every anticipation of living happily ever after. In the ensuing years she grew ever more tweedy. No one would stamp her as nouveau riche, thank you very much! Lady Gossinger’s concept of life
as lived by the gentry was based on certain novels written in the 1930’s and 1940’s—in particular, those by Dame Agatha Christie.

To the former Mabel Bowser, the Golden Age meant a time when breakfast was laid out in a grand parade of silver-domed dishes on a twelve-foot sideboard. Gentlemen went fox hunting, or busied themselves doing nothing in their libraries, while their wives concentrated on their herbaceous borders. And the discovery of a corpse on the premises was not permitted to delay mealtimes by more than one hour, even though the cook’s favorite carving knife was stuck up to its handle in the victim’s back.

It goes without saying that Lady Gossinger, nee Bowser, never seriously expected anyone to be murdered under her nose. Her married life moved contentedly forward until came that ill-fated day five years later when Sir Henry dropped his bombshell and the rose-colored scales fell from her eyes. Afterward, Mabel was to remember with bitter clarity how very chipper she had been feeling only an hour before her brave new world was blown utterly to smithereens. And she would reflect with a pinched and sour smile, very much like the one worn by Lady Normina on her marble tombstone, that she would never have guessed in a thousand years that a girl as seemingly unimportant as Flora Hutchins would have to be dealt with, one way or the other.

It was a Saturday afternoon toward the end of March. Young Vivian, as Lady Gossinger still called her nephew, even though he was now twenty-nine years old, had come up for the weekend. Although not handsome, he was certainly more than presentable with his thick brown hair, hazel eyes, and aristocratic features. There were four of them gathered in the tower sitting room. This was not an excessively cheerful apartment, being reminiscent of the one in which Anne Boleyn had spent her final days wondering how she would wear her hair for her last public appearance.

Sir Henry and her Ladyship were seated side by side on heavy carved chairs with the look of the judgment seat about them. Across from them, on a settee with oak arms and wafer-thin tapestry cushions, Vivian and Miss Sophie Doffit sat improving their posture. Sir Henry’s
cousin was as much a daily fixture as the bird’s nest in the niche above the window, having (by dint of forgetting to repack her suitcase) extended her week-long visit at the time of the wedding into permanent residence.

Lady Gossinger moved to cross her legs, remembered that doing so was common, and handed out smiles like toffees from a paper bag. If the atmosphere seemed the least bit strained it was only because two of the little family gathering were chilled to the marrow. The stone fireplace was empty, except for the bare bones of a rusted grate. And, despite recent work on the radiators, central heating at Gossinger still came down to closing the windows and wearing woolen underwear.

“I appreciate your having me underfoot.” Vivian addressed his aunt and uncle whilst wishing that they might all adjourn to the chapel, which he had always thought the coziest room at Gossinger. Failing that, he could only hope that Hutchins would soon arrive with a couple of hot water bottles along with afternoon tea.

“Stuff and nonsense. You’re never a scrap of bother!” Lady Gossinger’s voice vibrated with a heartiness that threatened to put further cracks in Gossinger’s ancient foundations.

“How kind of you to say so, Mabel!” Miss Doffit rubbed her hands together to get the circulation going. “Sometimes I start to worry, as old people will, that I may have outstayed my welcome by a few weeks.”

“Not at all, Sophie. We have enjoyed your visit.” Her Ladyship was able to speak with sincerity, because she firmly believed that life among the better families required having a poor relation hovering gratefully in the shadows. And then there was that resemblance to the Queen Mother, which made riding in the backseat of a taxi with Cousin Sophie a bit of a thrill, even as she warned the old lady that waving out the window in that
particular way might be a treasonable offense. Lady Gossinger drew a forbearing breath.

“Never mind, Sophie! Although, if you’d only listened a little harder before interrupting me, dear,” she laughed to soften the rebuke, “you would have realized I was talking to young Vivian. I was saying that
he
isn’t a scrap of bother. We’re quite awfully fond of him, isn’t that right, old bean?” Lady Gossinger raised her voice an octave or two as she turned to her husband and gave him a bracing pat on the knee.

“Oh, absolutely, Mabel!” Sir Henry chomped down on his words and slowly regurgitated them, in the manner of a man whose thoughts were elsewhere. “Couldn’t be more fond of the young cub if he were m’late younger brother Tom’s boy.”

“Vivian
is
Tom’s son, dear,” Lady Mabel said with wifely patience.

“Oh, yes, quite, quite! Old family name, Vivian ...” Sir Henry lapsed into reverie. A whoosh of icy wind came down the chimney, while rain began to beat at the narrow lattice windows in the stop-and-start manner of an untalented child practicing scales at the piano.

In truth, Lady Gossinger had developed a deep affection for her acquired nephew. It was born the instant Vivian had made it plain he had no wish to take up residence in the ancestral home when he came into the title upon his uncle’s death. He would, he had given his word as a gentleman, be happy for his aunt to continue living at Gossinger for the many, he hoped, years allotted to her.

“We only wish you’d come up to see us more often, young Vivian.” Her Ladyship gave him one of her cultivated smiles. “Positively topping having you here. But mustn’t push our good fortune. We know how it is with busy young men-about-town, don’t we, Henry?”

“Oh, absolutely. Not always an old fuddy-duddy. Remember being young m’self once upon a time. Seemed the thing to do, I suppose.”

The baronet’s faded eyes strayed to the longcase clock, which had neither ticked nor tocked in living memory, but still appeared, perhaps by some imperceptible change of facial expression, to be able to communicate the time to its master. “What’s it you’ve been doing with yourself recently, m’boy? Serving queen and country?”

“In a manner of speaking, Uncle Henry.” Vivian Gossinger tucked his feet under the faded strip of Persian carpet for warmth.

“Has someone been keeping secrets?” Lady Gossinger chided him with a raised finger that almost got blown off her hand by the force of the wind now taking rude peeks up Cousin Sophie’s skirts. “That won’t do, will it, dear? Your Uncle Henry and I have your very best interests at heart. And there’s absolutely nothing you can’t tell us that you wouldn’t tell your own mummy and daddy if they were still alive.”

“In that case, if you’re one-hundred-percent sure you want to hear this, Aunt Mabel!” Avoiding looking at the brass rubbing of Lady Normina on the wall that always gave him the willies, Vivian Gossinger announced: “To put it in a nutshell, Aunt, I’ve recently taken up employment selling men’s toiletries door-to-door.”

“You have done what, dear?” Lady Gossinger plunged back in her chair and immediately sprang forward again, after getting the Tudor Rose imprinted on her spine. She was shocked by what she had just heard. Deeply so. But part of her enjoyed being shocked. It was the proper response from someone with her responsibilities to the Family. Unless—was it possible young Vivian had been pulling her leg? Yes, that had to be it! Chuckling to show she hadn’t taken the bait, her Ladyship wagged her finger at her naughty nephew.

“Shame on you for telling such whoppers! Going
around from house to house with your little sample case, indeed! We should stand him in the corner for trying to frighten us, isn’t that right, Henry?”

“Sorry, m’dear! Must have fuzz in my ears, or the old brain’s gone on the blink. Missed what you were saying, but sure you’re right as always.” Sir Henry passed a hand over his bald pate. He appeared considerably more interested in the sound of the rain, now playing a Beethoven concerto on the windowpanes, than in his nephew’s earthshaking pronouncement.

“I’m not joking, Aunt Mabel.”

“But surely, Vivian!”

“I’m currently a Macho Man representative. But if it’s any consolation, Aunt, I’m not frightfully good at it. I’m always getting lost. And I don’t like being set upon by toy poodles with capped teeth and false nails.”

“Is someone talking to me?” Cousin Sophie immediately realized her mistake and said that it must have been her tummy asking for a scone with butter.

Lady Gossinger ignored her. “Vivian, for the sake of the family, listen to Auntie! There must be something else you could do to supplement your allowance. Something that would be more suited to your position in life. How about becoming an M.P., dear? You wouldn’t have to take a lot of nasty exams, and think what you’d save on meals by going to all those roast chicken dinners.”

“I’m sorry to upset you, Aunt Mabel.” Vivian looked remorseful. “But I think I should stick it out with Macho Man Products a bit longer. Character-building and all that. It really is a pretty decent outfit. And they do a frightfully good body cream and an oatmeal-and-avocado face mask, if Uncle Henry should be interested.”

Sir Henry made a noise deep in his throat and did an excellent job of appearing lost in thought, but Lady Gossinger could not hide her distress. Face masks and body creams! Was she learning something about her nephew that she would rather not have known? Was she about to discover that he kept Persian cats and liked to do his own flower arranging? Of course, this sort of thing cropped up in the best families; they (whoever
they
were) said that Richard the Lion Heart ... So perhaps—Lady Gossinger took a reviving breath—the well-bred thing to do was to be broad-minded. But that didn’t mean, surely, that she had to encourage young Vivian.

“I’m afraid,” she bit down on her lip, “that your Uncle Henry’s going to blame himself.”

“Because of the job?”

“That’s right, dear. Anything else is entirely your own business.” Lady Gossinger basked for a moment in the glow being shed by her halo. “Henry blames himself for everything. Comprehensive schools, the Common Market, take-out curries, you name it. And, strictly between you and me, young Vivian,” Lady Gossinger glanced at her husband, who sat oblivious two feet away, “I worry, as any devoted wife would, that he spends far too much time in the Penitent’s Room off the chapel. But funnily enough, dear, that gives me an idea.”

“It does?”

“The perfect solution, Vivian. I know you’re not all that churchy, but you could come and live at Gossinger for a while and do some voluntary work at Lincoln Cathedral. Wouldn’t that be jolly? We’re only about sixteen miles away. That’s minutes in the car.” Her Ladyship was bubbling over with enthusiasm. “I think it would be particularly nice, dear, if you helped out in the information booth. You could tell people where to find the famous Imp and how at one time the cathedral’s copy of the Magna Carta used to be kept in an old biscuit tin, and then there’s that funny little legend
about the Swineherd of Stow. Americans in particular love that sort of thing.”

While Lady Gossinger was taking a well-earned breath and Vivian was wondering how he could tactfully explain that he would rather live in a bus shelter than at Gossinger, Cousin Sophie decided that having counted to three hundred and thirty-one she might reasonably reenter the conversation. Sitting up very straight, with her hand on the standard lamp beside her as if holding a scepter, she came out strongly in support of her Ladyship.

“Mabel is right, as always, Vivian. Voluntary work is one thing, but the other kind—where one receives remuneration—is never a suitable occupation for people of our sort. One of my brothers went to work for the Bank of England. And it killed our daddy. Have you,” Cousin Sophie’s cushiony soft face grew troubled, “ever worked in a bank, Vivian?”

“No, Cousin Sophie.”

Miss Doffit gathered Vivian’s hands between her own and squeezed, revealing surprising strength for an old lady, so that his eyes watered. “I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but I can’t help thinking it a very vulgar occupation—delving into people’s money problems. I don’t know that I can think of anything more discreditable, except perhaps working in one of those secondhand shops that thrive on the spoils of people fallen on adversity.” Cousin Sophie resolutely blinked away a tear. “Oh dear, here I go again, rattling on as if my opinion is of the least importance. Have I been making a nuisance of myself again?”