Lord Foxbridge Butts In (29 page)

The next interval, Lady Beatrice stayed in the box, introducing me to her escort, a young but peculiarly unattractive colonel by the name of Tallant with bulging eyes and a receding hairline; the Colonel was full of excitement about the nightclub they were planning to visit after the opera, a new place called The Chicago Club, which was supposed to be a replica of a real American speakeasy: they served whiskey in teacups and gin in tooth-glasses, with a negro jazz band and dancers in miniscule costumes. Col. Tallant insisted I come along, as ‘Lady Bea’ had so clearly taken a shine to me.

Act III started prettily enough, sweet and quiet with a lovely tenor aria; but things got ugly very quickly, and I was on the edge of my seat chewing my knuckles as Lady Beatrice translated the whole thing in my ear, with torture and suicide and all manner of assorted awfulness. It was terribly compelling, once I knew what was happening, but I was frankly relieved when the whole thing was over.

Princess Mary and her guests bustled out immediately after the curtain-calls, with an air of people who are
quite
ready for their beds and would trample anyone who stood in their way; Bunny and Prince George tagged along to the Chicago Club with Prince Henry’s party, and we all piled rather pell-mell into a bunch of limousines that waited at the Royal Entrance. It was a very short drive to the Strand, where the Chicago Club occupied the ground-floor and basement of a big commercial building a few doors down from the Savoy.

The entrance to the club was in the back, down a dark alley that was meant to lend atmosphere but merely smelt of garbage, with a scarlet marquee taking up most of a narrow courtyard bright with neon signs. Inside was similarly lit, with tubes of carnival-coloured neon everywhere but the rest of the lights kept low, creating a strange and disorienting contrast of bright and dark. The music was incredibly loud, dominated by a high-pitched saxophone; and when we entered there were a dozen girls in spangled shorts and brassières making an awful racket with tap shoes on the dance-floor.

We were shown to a large curtained alcove, where Their Royal Highnesses could see without being seen, and were brought a massive battered steel tea-service of a half-dozen pots and carafes of different liquors, with glasses and teacups and napery, as well as racks of toast and chafing-dishes of sausages and scrambled eggs, so we could serve ourselves — it was exactly like having tea in a university common-room, except we were all in evening dress and getting pie-eyed drunk, screaming at each other in order to be heard over the raucous music.

I went and danced with Lady Bea, as well as the two other ladies from Prince Henry’s party; a lot of the fellows had taken off their jackets and loosened their ties, and I followed suit after the first dance lest I be roasted alive — American dances like the Charleston and the Black Bottom are terrifically athletic, I got quite a workout that night.

Toward the end of the night, I was escorting Lady Bea back to the table when we ran into the Marquis de Mazan, looking cool and sinister in exquisite black tie; he already knew Lady Bea and her husband, and fell into a brief but apparently amusing conversation in fluent French, then bade us both good night and disappeared into the gloom.

“I’m surprised you know Louis,” Lady Bea said to me as we regained the table.

“I only met him this afternoon,” I admitted, “Though he lives in the same hotel as I do.”

“And
now
I’m surprised you live in
that
hotel,” she looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, “You’re not quite the naïve little lamb you appear, are you?”

“I can still be shocked, as I think you’ve noticed; but nobody has called me ‘naïve’ since I left Eton. How do you know the Marquis?”

“Oh, Toddy and I go to his little ‘auctions’ now and then,” she laughed and held out her cigarette for me to light.

“Auctions?” I was puzzled by the word, “Like antiques?”

“No, slave auctions,” she grinned when she saw she’d shocked me again, “They’re very amusing. Young prostitutes, boys and girls; they come out on a stage and do something wonderfully depraved, in singles or pairs or even groups, and then Louis auctions each one off to the highest bidder to take home for the night.”

“That’s disgusting,” I made a face, thinking of Gabriel in such a situation.

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” she lifted her shoulders in an indifferent shrug, “There are those who would call
your
amorous activities ‘disgusting.’ There’s no need to pay attention to such people.”

“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” I apologized, “I spoke without thinking. Or rather, I was thinking of a young friend of mine who used to make his living as a prostitute. And I was thinking of things I’ve been told about the Marquis. Imagining de
 Mazan auctioning off my Gabriel touched a nerve.”

“No insult taken,” she smiled beautifully, “And I quite understand. If one does not find pleasure in sadomasochism, it must sound absolutely ghastly.”

I opened my mouth to ask her if she was herself a devotee of sadomasochism, or if she was speaking generally; but I stopped myself in time: that was
too
indelicate a question to launch on a lady. Chivalry demands the pretense of believing women are incapable of lewdness, and I grew up steeped to the gills in chivalry — even though experience had taught me that this was
simply
not true.

We stayed at the Chicago Club until well after four in the morning, and I chose to walk home in the chill of pre-dawn in order to clear my head; I thanked Prince George for the opera, and Prince Henry for the drinks, kissed Lady Bea’s hand ostentatiously, and set off down the Strand.

I wasn’t even as far as Trafalgar Square before I regretted the decision: four hours of dancing athletically in opera pumps, and swilling whiskey out of teacups, and then a mile’s walk in the same pumps, was a very stupid idea. But of course there were no cabs to be had at that hour, so I suffered the rest of the way home and crawled into bed without even getting undressed.

*****

When I woke up later that morning, my rumpled evening clothes were itching like mad, and my back and feet and head were all in excruciating pain; Pond was standing there with my coffee and a perturbed look on his face — the part of his face that wasn’t swimming around in circles, that is.

“Aspirin,” I croaked, gingerly turning over on my back and reaching for the coffee, “and water. Gallons of water.”

“The Marquis de Mazan called this morning, my lord,” Pond said austerely, lowering his tray again to show me that it bore a calling-card as well as my coffee.

“Did he say what he wanted?” I took the card so that Pond could stand back up, but didn’t look at it. I couldn’t have read it, anyway — I could barely see Pond, and he was a lot bigger than a calling-card.

“He wanted to sneak in and surprise you!” the crust of Pond fell off as Reggie vented his anger, “The
nerve
of that creature! I told him it was more than my position was worth to allow you to be waked before noon after being out all night, and he
laughed
at me and called me a ‘silly little bulldog.’ He’ll be laughing out the other side of his face if I ever catch him outdoors on my afternoon off.”

“You needn’t wait for your afternoon off,” I smiled, though it made me wince, “I encourage you to take a poke at him any time you like, and another one from me. Now get the aspirin, please. And a hot bath with plenty of Epsom salts, I feel like I’ve been through a combine harvester.”

“Very good, my lord,” he bowed and went to the bathroom, his crust back in place.

Every once in a while, I’d pop out of bed and go to the Park, but Sundays were mostly my day to loaf about my rooms; I was so frequently out late on Saturday nights, and usually nursing a hangover of some description next day, so I’d learned to accept no invitations. I didn’t get dressed until luncheon, which was usually at tea-time, then dined early in the hotel and went back to bed at a more respectable hour.

That Sunday, though, was interrupted by a near-constant stream of visitors. First, Bunny came by while I was still at breakfast, wanting to compare notes about the opera, the royals, and the Chicago Club; he was so abominably cheerful that I wanted to throw my egg at him, but then I’d have to wait for Pond to boil another one. Then the Marquis stopped in again to ask me to lunch, but I declined as politely as I could, claiming a slight head-cold after walking home late last night. Later on, Baron van der Swertz and Gabriel came by to invite me along on a picnic they were having in St. James’s Park, but I gave the same excuse; it was a lovely day for picnicking in the Park, but I was in no mood to be a third wheel (though they were not lovers, they were
constantly
billing and cooing at each other, and it sometimes got on my nerves)

Finally Twister came by at dinner-time, giving me an excuse to invite him to dine with me, and he accepted. After a week or so had passed from our tense
contretemps
on the occasion of my rescue from a Soho cellar, and I’d returned from my sudden flight to Foxbridge Castle, I formally apologized to him for my melodramatic behavior and we had resumed our friendly relations.

I told him all about the opera he’d missed, and the nightclub after, assuring him that he needn’t have worried about his reputation being tainted because Prince Henry and Princess Mary had also been there, and
no
more dully respectable people under the age of thirty could be found in all the kingdoms of the Empire. But he just shrugged it off: he hated opera, especially modern operas like
Turandot
, and had only accepted in the first place because Bunny seemed to want it so much; Prince George had merely been a handy excuse to oil out of it.

Over dinner he talked to me about a new kidnapping case he was working on, but without giving any confidential details, and I was unable to help him find any new perspectives without knowing anything about the people involved; but it was a very pleasant conversation and a very pleasant dinner, so I went to bed feeling very pleased with life in general.

The next couple of days passed in their usual idle manner, with me wandering around Town looking for things to buy and people to meet, loafing at one of my several clubs (by the end of June, I belonged to Brooks’s, Boodle’s, the Oxford & Cambridge, the Athenæum, the Bachelors’, the Savile, and the Turf; I liked to lunch in a different one every day), and seeing shows or hunting up new nightclubs in the evening.

Wednesday afternoon, though, I returned from lunch at the Savile and found Lady Caroline waiting for me in the foyer of Hyacinth House, looking somewhat distressed and mangling her gloves nervously. Mr.
 Delagardie was perched nervously behind his desk, looking even
more
distressed, and taking it out on a pen and pad instead of his gloves.

“Lady Caroline!” I stepped forward and ducked under her hat to kiss her cheek, “What in the world are you doing here?”

“Is there someplace we can talk?” she asked, her eyes sliding from Mr. Delagardie to the front door, intimating that she needed some privacy in which to unburden herself.

“Is it all right to have ladies in the library, Mr.
 Delagardie?” I asked; I’d never
seen
women in Hyacinth House before — and accustomed as I was to colleges and clubs, I’d never really noticed their absence until now.

“If your lordship would care to entertain her ladyship in the winter-garden, I will have tea brought,” Delagardie said smoothly, giving me to understand that ladies were
not
welcome in the library — nor anywhere above the first flight of stairs — without actually having to say so.

“It’s all right, Lady Caroline,” I said as I took her elbow to guide her through the dining-room, “It will be dead empty this time of day, and we can huddle next to the fountain if you’re worried about eavesdroppers.”

“Thank you, Foxy,” she relaxed against me slightly, “And you’d probably better start calling me ‘Caro,’ like the rest of my family, if we’re going to be engaged-to-be-engaged.”

“I swear, you have more names than I do,” I laughed at this new nickname, seating her in one of the pretty little bamboo chairs that filled the winter-garden, next to the fountain where nothing much could be heard over the rush and clatter of the water (I know because I tried eavesdropping on someone who was sitting there, without success). One of the lunch waiters came with tea and iced cakes, and left us alone immediately, “So, what’s up?”

“Claude has disappeared,” she said dramatically, like an ingenue on the stage.

“
How
disappeared?” I poured out the tea, “‘Cries in the night and ransom notes made of cut-out letters from newspapers’ disappeared, or ‘didn’t come home last night’ disappeared?”

“Neither,” she shook her head impatiently, “He went out to lunch on Monday and we haven’t seen him since.”

“Well, the police do say it’s not an official missing-person case until forty-eight hours have elapsed. Have you been to the police?”

“Of course not! If he’s just gone off with some friends and forgotten to write, and we have Scotland Yard out raising the hue and cry, the newspapers will rag us from here to Hell and back again.”