Her Royal Spyness (15 page)

I froze with my brush in midair. The other speaker had been Tristram Hautbois. I heard their voices disappearing down the hallway, but I had no idea which room they had gone into. It took all my self-control to finish my sweeping, gather up my cleaning paraphernalia, and deposit it in the broom cupboard before escaping through the servants’ entrance.

My heart was thumping wildly as I crossed Eaton Place. This scheme of mine was madness. Already, on my second day of work, it had led to two embarrassing encounters. Next time I couldn’t count on being so lucky and getting away unscathed. I felt my cheeks glowing pink at my choice of words.

Getting away unscathed—that was precisely what had happened to me in the bedroom. If Darcy had decided to force his attentions upon me, as the older generation so quaintly worded it, I’m not sure I would have been strong-minded enough to have resisted him.

A fierce wind sprang up as I crossed Eaton Place and I held my coat around me as I hurried home, looking forward to a cup of tea—no, make that a brandy—to calm my rattled nerves. It had been quite a morning. I let myself into Rannoch House and stood in the marble-tiled hallway.

“Binky,” I called. “Are you home? I am in desperate need of a glass of brandy. Do you have the key to the liquor cabinet?”

There was no answer. I felt the emptiness of the house pressing down on me. It wasn’t usually the brightest of places but today it felt positively chilly. I shivered and went upstairs to take off my maid’s uniform. As I passed the bathroom on the second floor I heard a loud drip, drip, drip. Then I saw a trickle of water, coming out from under the bathroom door.

Really, Binky was just too hopeless, I decided. He must have decided to have another attempt at a bath and had forgotten to turn the tap off properly. I threw open the bathroom door and stopped short, my mouth open in alarm. The bathtub was full to overflowing, and occupied. For a moment I thought it was Binky lying there.

“Frightfully sorry, ” I muttered, then I took a second look.

A fully clothed man was lying submerged in the bath, not moving, his face under the water and his eyes wide open, staring upward. What’s more, I recognized him. It was Gaston de Mauxville.

Chapter 12

Rannoch House
Friday, April 29, 1932

I had never actually seen a dead body before and I stared at him in fascination. He can’t really be dead, I told myself. It’s some kind of macabre French joke, or he’s trying to frighten me. Or maybe he’s sleeping. But his eyes were open and staring vacantly at the ceiling. I tugged experimentally on a black-patented toe that was sticking out of the water. He sloshed around a bit, sending more water onto the floor, but his expression didn’t change. That’s when I admitted what I had known all along. Gaston de Mauxville was lying dead in my bathtub.

A cold dread seized me. Binky had been in the house earlier. Had the same madman also murdered him? “Binky!” I shouted, running out of the bathroom. “Binky, are you all right?”

I searched his bedroom, the study, the morning room. No sign of him. Then panic really overtook me and I pictured his body hidden under one of the dust sheets, so I ran from room to room, tearing them off, looking in wardrobes, under beds. I even went down to the servants’ quarters and poked around there. There was no trace of him, not even in the coal’ole. I went back into his bedroom, and I noticed his clothes were gone. A terrible suspicion began to take shape. I remembered Binky’s brave assertion that he would challenge de Mauxville to a duel. Could he possibly have killed de Mauxville? Then I shook my head firmly. Binky was brought up to be the honorable sort. He’d mentioned challenging de Mauxville to a duel. I could picture any kind of fair play and may the better man win, although I thought it hardly likely that Binky would turn out to be the better man in any kind of combat. But drowning somebody in a bathtub? Binky would never resort to such demeaning behavior, even to his worst enemy, and even if he were strong enough to hold a large chap like de Mauxville under the water long enough to drown.

I went back to the bathroom, half hoping that the body might have disappeared. But he still lay there, eyes staring upward, black overcoat bobbing in the water. I had no idea what to do next, but an extraordinary idea came to me: the document. Maybe he carried it on his person. Fighting back waves of revulsion, I reached into his pockets and extracted a soggy envelope. I was in luck. It contained the document. I proceeded to tear it into little pieces and flushed it down the lavatory. I was immediately appalled by what I had done, of course, but it was too late to retrieve it. At least the police would find no incriminating evidence on him when they arrived.

I paced up and down the second-floor landing, trying to put my thoughts in order. I knew I ought to summon the police, but I hesitated to do so. Our nemesis was lying dead in our bath, and any policeman would leap to the conclusion that one of us must have killed him. I didn’t think I could persuade the police to believe that a stranger had chosen our bathtub, out of the whole of London, in which to commit suicide.

But I had just destroyed the incriminating evidence, hadn’t I? So who knew, apart from us, that he was our nemesis? Oh, blast and damnation. Our solicitors, of course. They even held a copy of the document and I didn’t think they’d be easily persuaded to hand it over, or destroy it, even given their two hundred years of loyalty to our family. And I also didn’t think I could persuade them not to mention our association with de Mauxville when the news of his death was made public.

I peeped into the bathroom again. Absurd thoughts were now flashing through my head. Would it be possible for Binky and me to remove the body and drop it into the Thames when nobody was looking? One drowning would appear pretty much like another. But it all seemed rather daunting: de Mauxville was heavy in life, for one thing, and for another, we had no loyal servants or means of transportation in London. I could hardly see us hiring a taxi and propping the body between us while saying, “The Embankment, my good man, and make it a deserted stretch of river.” And even if it could be accomplished, it would somehow be letting down generations of fierce Scotsmen whose motto had been Death Before Dishonor. I’m not so sure about the Hanoverian ancestors. I think they could be quite devious when they wanted to.

I was still in midthought when the doorbell rang. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Should I answer it? What if it was only Binky, who was quite likely to have forgotten his key? Whoever it was, they might only come back if the door wasn’t answered now. I would just have to get rid of them. I shuddered at that particular choice of words. Not the best in current circumstances. I started down the two flights of stairs, was just about to open the front door, and suddenly realized I was still wearing my maid’s uniform. I grabbed my coat from the hall rack and slipped it on, wrapping it tightly around me. Then I opened the door.

“Oh, hello, may I speak to Lady—oh, my gosh, Georgie, it’s you.”

Tristram Hautbois stood there, his dark hair flopping boyishly over his forehead, beaming at me.

“Tristram. Oh. What a surprise,” I stammered.

“Sorry to show up unexpectedly like this,” he said, still with that expectant smile on his face, “but the old boy at the solicitors I work for sent me to deliver some papers to an address just around the corner and I thought it seemed too tempting not to see where you lived and say hello. It feels like ages since I saw you last.”

Since I had seen him less than an hour ago, I didn’t know what to say to this. Obviously he didn’t associate the kneeling sweeper in black uniform with me. I pulled the coat more tightly around me.

“Were you just going out?” he asked.

“No, just got home. Haven’t had time to take off my coat yet,” I said.

“Are you under the weather?”

“No, why?”

“It’s not that cold out today,” he said. “In fact it’s quite mild. I’m not even wearing an overcoat and here you are, all bundled up.”

“The house is always so chilly with these high ceilings.” I could hear myself babbling and tried to regain my composure.

“What a piece of luck that my timing was so good then, wasn’t it?” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my showing up on your doorstep like this. So this is Rannoch House. I must say it’s pretty impressive. I’d love you to show me around. I understand that your father was something of a collector and you’ve some fine paintings.”

“I’d be happy to show you around, Tristram, but now isn’t the best of times,” I said, cutting off the end of his sentence.

His face fell. He had the most schoolboyish of faces, his joy or despair clearly showing for all to see.

“I thought you might be pleased to see me,” he said in a small voice.

“I am pleased to see you,” I said, “and any other time I’d be delighted to invite you in, but I’m in the house alone, and you know what my royal relatives would say if I entertained a man, unchaperoned, even in the middle of the day, so I’m afraid . . .”

“I do understand,” he said, nodding earnestly. “But don’t the servants count as chaperons?”

“No servants either,” I said. “I’m living here alone at the moment until I can hire a maid.”

“Gosh, that’s awfully daring of you,” he said. “So modern.”

“I’m not trying to be modern and daring,” I said. “Simply lack of funds. I have to find a way to support myself.”

“Then we’re in the same boat.” He beamed again. Truly he had a most endearing smile. “Abandoned and fighting the cruel world.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Not like those poor wretches on the bread lines.”

“Well, no,” he admitted.

“And at least you have gainful employment. When you’ve finished your articles you’ll have a profession. I, on the other hand, am qualified only for marriage and I’m only qualified for that by my pedigree. My family is determined to marry me off to some awful foreign prince who is bound to be assassinated within the year.”

“You could always marry me,” he said, pronouncing it, of course “mawwy.”

I laughed. “What, and trade a freezing and empty house for a bedsitter in Bromley? It’s a sweet offer, Tristram, but I hardly think you’re in a position to support a wife, nor will be for some time.”

“I may be,” he said. “If I come into my guardian’s fortune . . .”

“What a horrid thing to say,” I snapped, my nerves close to breaking point by this time. “You almost sound as if you’re hoping Sir Hubert dies.”

“Not hoping. Good Lord, no,” he stammered. “Nothing’s further from the truth. I worship the old boy. He couldn’t have been kinder to me. But I’m only going by what the quacks have said and they have impressed upon me that the outcome is not likely to be good. Bad head injuries, you know. In a coma.”

“So sad,” I said. “If it’s head injuries, then I’d rather he died. Such an energetic man could never be a lifelong invalid.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Tristram agreed. “So I’m trying to hope for the best, but prepared to accept the worst.”

Suddenly I couldn’t stand there chatting a second longer without exploding. “Look, Tristram, I am most pleased to see you, but I have to go now. I’m . . . meeting someone for tea and I have to change.”

“Another time, maybe? At the weekend? I had promised to show you London, had I not?”

“Yes, you had. And I’m looking forward to it, but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing on Saturday and Sunday.” (I can’t use the word “weekend,” even in moments of stress.) “My brother is in town, you know. I may have family matters to attend to.”

“Your brother? I don’t believe I’ve met him.”

“You probably wouldn’t have. He’s my half brother, actually, and he would have been away at school when I came to stay with my mother at Sir Hubert’s.”

“Where did he go to school?”

“Gairlachan. That formidable place in the Highlands.”

“With the cross-country runs and cold showers at dawn? Just like the Spartan boys. The weak die and the strong become empire builders.”

“That’s the one.”

“Sir Hubert threatened to send me there if I didn’t pull my socks up, but he settled for Downside instead, since Mama was a Catholic and he wanted to honor her wishes. I must say I was relieved. Those monks like their creature comforts.”

“That’s where you were at school with Darcy?”

“O’Mara, you mean?” His face clouded. “Yes, he was a couple of years above me but we were in the same house.” He leaned closer to me, even though we were the only two people on a deserted pavement. “Look, Georgie, I meant what I said the other day. He’s a bad egg, you know. Untrustworthy, just like a typical Irishman. Shake hands and then stab you in the back as soon as you turn away.” He paused and looked at me. “You’re not—er, involved with him, are you?”

“He’s just a casual acquaintance,” I said, half wanting to lie and watch Tristram’s face when I said that we were lovers. “We met at a hunt ball, apparently, and then at that wedding. That is the sum total of our acquaintanceship.” I didn’t mention the unsettling little scene in the Featherstonehaughs’ bedroom.

Relief flooded his boyish features. “That’s good, only I wouldn’t like to see a nice girl like you ending up with her heart broken, or worse.”

“Thank you, but I have no intention of anybody breaking my heart,” I said, my hand already itching to close that front door. “I must go now, Tristram. Please excuse me.”

“So may I see you again soon? Maybe I could take you to lunch somewhere? Nothing too fancy, I’m afraid, but I know some good cheap Italian places. You know, spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of red plonk for one and sixpence.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry about today, but I really must go. Now.” With that I turned and fled into the house. Once I’d closed the door, I stood for some time, leaning against the solid coldness of the oak while my heart regained its normal pace.

Chapter 13

Rannoch House
Friday, April 29, 1932

At least that little interlude had helped me get my thoughts into order. First I must find Binky, I decided. Before I summoned the police, I had to know for certain that he had no part in the killing of de Mauxville, and the most likely place to find him would be his club. He had been taking his meals there since coming to London and it was where he felt comfortable. I tried to think positively: maybe his disappearance had nothing whatever to do with the body. Perhaps he had finally decided that it would be easier to take a room at his club and avoid walking home after dinner and several brandies.