Sweet Poison (2 page)

Once he turned the Lagonda on to country roads the going was slower. He glanced at his watch. Damn it, he was going to be
very
late and Gerald would look at him in that special way he had when he was displeased, pulling his moustache and wrinkling his brows. Against his better judgment, Edward had agreed to attend one of his brother’s infernal dinners where he would have to make himself pleasant to pompous politicians and stuffy civil servants. It was not his idea of a lively evening and he had at first refused, pointing out that on no account could he let the Cherrypickers down. The Cherrypickers were all friends of his, Old Etonians for the most part like himself, who played cricket against similar clubs all over the south of England. On this occasion they were playing a strong side at Richmond and he had every intention of carrying his bat for his team. However, Gerald had sounded so desperate when he had said he could not come that he had weakened and then given way. The Duke’s invitation became even less appealing when he explained why he was begging for his younger brother’s presence.

‘I know it’s not your sort of thing, Ned, and I apologize for inviting you at the last minute like this. The fact of the matter is, I’m in a bit of a hole. I have invited Lord Weaver, the newspaper owner – you know who I mean?’

‘I know who you mean,’ Edward had replied tartly. ‘I may not dine with the nobs on a regular basis like you, Gerald, but I am not a complete ostrich. He owns the
New Gazette
, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes, and several other papers as well.’

‘And why do you need me to entertain him?’

‘Well, I don’t need you to entertain him, Ned. The thing is, he has a perfectly charming wife and a rather difficult stepdaughter that the wife is insisting on bringing with her. Apparently, she tries not to let her out of her sight.’

‘And I’m to be nanny to the poisonous stepdaughter, is that it?’

‘Yes. I know it’s asking a lot, Ned, but you have to help me.’

‘She’s called Hermione, isn’t she? I have met her a couple of times before.’

‘That’s wonderful!’

‘I said I have met her, Gerald. That doesn’t mean I ever want to meet her again. Doesn’t she have a young man? I seem to remember seeing her entwined with a nasty piece of work by the name of Charlie Lomax when I bumped into her at the Fellowes’ ball.’

‘That’s right. I invited him at the mother’s request but the blighter dropped out an hour ago without a decent excuse. I couldn’t think what else to do except telephone you.’

‘Thank you, Gerald! That was very well put.’

‘Oh, you know what I mean. My acquaintance with bright young things is rather limited. Please, Ned, you must come.’

‘Oh well, I suppose so,’ said Edward unwillingly. He was fond of his elder brother and loved Connie, his sister-in-law. He guessed she did not have an easy time of it with the Duke, who acted at least ten years older than his real age which was forty-one. ‘Mind you, I may have to cut it a bit tight because I can’t let the Cherrypickers down.’

‘Well, try not to be late, Ned. This dinner is more important than a cricket match.’

‘More important than cricket,’ exclaimed the young man. ‘Pshaw! I say, Gerald . . .’ but the Duke had replaced the receiver. He was not enthusiastic about the telephone and associated its use – along with telegrams – with unpleasantness of one sort or another.

Edward persuaded himself that if the Cherrypickers elected to field first and then bat he would knock up a respectable thirty or even forty as opening bat and be on his way to Mersham by four-thirty at the latest. It was not to be. On his day he was a passable spin bowler and a first-class bat. When, after breaking for lunch, he had stood at the crease, resplendent in his white flannels, he had known from the first ball tossed at him that he could do no wrong. That very first ball he had knocked for six and thereafter he never faltered. It was not until, tired but triumphant, he had walked back to the pavilion raising his bat to acknowledge the applause, not out one hundred and five, that he had any idea of how much time had passed. Brushing aside invitations to celebrate a famous victory he had grabbed his clothes, thrown his bag into the back of the Lagonda and raced out of London, part of him still elated by his record-beating innings and part furious with himself for thinking he could combine an afternoon of perfect cricket with a dinner-party at Mersham Castle in Hampshire, a good two and a half hours away.

Edward was not quite the empty-headed pleasure-seeker his brother supposed him to be. He was intellectually his brother’s superior but he liked to disguise his intelligence below a veneer of flippancy. Since coming down from Cambridge he had not found any employment to his taste though he had been tempted by the diplomatic service. He had plenty of money and very little patience so he was not cut out for office work. His restlessness had found an outlet in travel to the most outlandish corners of the world and an addiction to any sport which promised danger. He had an idea, which he had never put into words, that pleasure had to be earned through pain but the life he led, so active but essentially purposeless, did not altogether satisfy him. He knew himself well enough to realize he was looking for something which would test every sinew and brain cell and give his life meaning.

In 1914, when his eldest brother Frank had died trying to take a machine gun emplacement with only courage to set against a murderous hail of bullets, he had still been a schoolboy. He had hardly known his brother, now a dead hero, but he saw the effect his death had on his father and on his other brother Gerald, and he mourned. Though Gerald might not recognize it, Edward had a passionate hatred of war the equal of his own but he did not share Gerald’s belief that a new, even more horrible war could be avoided by a series of dinner-parties, however influential the guests.

Edward had asked who, along with the Weavers, was coming to the castle for this particular dinner to drink the Duke’s excellent wine and eat his food and talk about how to make a lasting peace in Europe. ‘Well, it’s not an ordinary dinner-party,’ the Duke told him. ‘It was the men I wanted but of course, where there are female appendages, I have invited them too. There will be twelve of us altogether. There’s Sir Alistair Craig . . .’ Craig was an old friend of the family. He had commanded Franklyn’s regiment in 1914 when he was already a distinguished soldier – a VC, no less. He had now retired but was said still to wield a lot of influence at Horse Guards. Peter Larmore was also coming with his long-suffering wife. Edward knew him slightly and knew his reputation as a ladies’ man. Brilliant but unsound, he was a rising politician – a Conservative – who, it was forecast, would soon be a member of the new Prime Minister’s cabinet if he did not blot his copy book.

There was also to be present Cecil Haycraft, Bishop of Worthing, one of the new breed of political bishops who could be seen at the head of protest marches as often as in his cathedral and who enjoyed the sound of his own voice. He made speeches at ‘peace rallies’ – he was a convinced pacifist – and was beginning to be a familiar voice on the wireless. Even the Duke had heard him though he rarely listened to the wireless except for news bulletins. Finally, a new man in the German embassy, Baron Helmut von Friedberg, who was said to have the ear of the recently appointed German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, had promised to come. He was the Duke’s greatest ‘catch’ and Larmore, who had met Friedberg on several occasions, had used his influence to secure the German’s acceptance of the Duke’s invitation. Baron von Friedberg was the focus of the dinner and the Duke had high hopes that something useful might be achieved by having the man at his table.

Edward’s use as a guest was not confined to his role as Hermione’s nursemaid. He had charm. He could, as the Duke put it to himself, ‘oil the wheels’, fill in any embarrassing pauses in the conversation. As the Duke had said to his wife at breakfast, ‘You know, Connie m’dear, that boy must have something. The women like him and yet the men seem not to resent him. In fact, I was talking to Carlisle at the club last week and he said he was one of the ablest men he knew and the bravest. Apparently, Carlisle told me, Ned pulled off an amazing rescue when he was climbing in the Alps last year but he never said a word to me about it. Did he to you?’

‘No,’ said the Duchess, smiling, ‘but then I would not have expected him to. Beneath all that – what shall we call it: braggadocio? – no, not braggadocio – let’s say persiflage, your little brother is one of the most modest men I know. He talks and talks, shows off like a peacock in front of the ladies, who love it of course, and yet, as you say, the men see immediately the . . . the iron in his soul. And don’t forget he is intelligent.’

‘Oh yes, he’s clever enough,’ said the Duke, massaging honey from Mersham’s own apiaries on to his toast. ‘He got a first at Cambridge and all that but what I can’t understand is he doesn’t
do
anything. He rackets around the world trying to break his neck, getting into every scrape, when he could be – well, when he could be in the House or something.’

Connie laughed. ‘Can you see Ned surviving one hour in that place? Duffers or crooks – sometimes both – he once described Members of Parliament to me.’

‘I just hope he isn’t going to be late tonight, that’s all,’ said the Duke, accepting that he never would understand his brother’s lack of interest in what most of the world considered to be important. ‘He says he’s got to play in some cricket match or other on his way here. I gather that girl of Weaver’s – what’s her name?’

‘Hermione.’

‘I gather Hermione is worse than the yellow peril,’ he finished morosely, ‘and now that cub Lomax has cried off, I’m counting on him to take her off my hands. I don’t want anything to distract Weaver from getting to know Friedberg. I think he could really be important to us.’

‘When Lady Weaver asked me to invite Mr Lomax,’ said Connie, ‘she hinted he might make difficulties about coming. Reading between the lines, I guess that Hermione thinks she’s in love with him but he is playing hard to get.’

The Duke sighed. ‘The young today! They aren’t like –’

‘Don’t start playing the old man, Gerald,’ said the Duchess sharply. ‘Our generation was just as wilful, especially when they had money like Hermione Weaver. But then the war came and –’

‘Perhaps we should just have been honest with Weaver and told him not to bring the gel because without her chap she’s going to be bored stiff,’ the Duke broke in.

‘Well, it’s too late now, but don’t worry, darling,’ said the Duchess comfortably, ‘Ned won’t let you down. He may cut it fine but he’s never late.’

But for once this sensible woman was to be proved wrong.

Edward looked at his watch again. It had taken him longer than he had expected to negotiate Reading. He considered stopping at a public house to telephone the castle and explain that he was going to be a little late, but that would only delay him still further. No, he would cut across country and make his gorgeous girl fly and be there at least in time for the fish.

He had long ago mastered the spider’s web of minor roads, many of them little more than lanes, narrow enough to be sure but passable in a motor car with a little care and which cut half an hour off the journey to Mersham. For several miles he made good time and when he came up a steep slope on to the spine of the Downs, which run deep into Hampshire, he was beginning to feel that he would not be very late after all. The road marched straight ahead of him, whitened by chalk from where the tar had blistered and peeled. He blessed the old Roman road builders who had scorned to circumvent obstacles, preferring simply to pretend they did not exist. He pressed his foot hard on the accelerator pedal and the Lagonda leaped from thirty to forty until the needle on the speedometer wavered above the sixty mark.

Edward experienced for the second time that day the joy of being beyond normal physical restraints. Just as when he felt rather than heard the delicious crack of leather on willow earlier that afternoon, he now felt the electrical charge which comes when nature recognizes a perfect match of mental control over physical power.

Glancing in the mirror, he could see nothing behind him but a cloud of white dust which the Lagonda’s wheels were raising from the sun-dried, badly macadamized road. Then he looked ahead. Because of the dust he had put on his leather helmet and goggles and now he took one hand off the wheel to wipe them, for a second not quite believing what had suddenly come into view. The blanched streak of road ahead of him was no longer empty. Although the road had looked quite level, stretching into infinity, he now realized, fatally late in the day, that this had been an illusion. A shallow dip had effectively concealed a wagon piled high with hay, a tottering mountain moving slowly up the gradient towards him pulled by two horses straining against their harnesses. It filled the whole width of the road. The painter Constable, no doubt, would have said, ‘Ah, a haywain!’ and set up his easel and begun painting. Edward’s reaction was rather different. Slamming on the brakes he went into a skid which would have drawn an admiring gasp from an ice-skater. Struggling to control the car he swerved around the wagon before swaying elegantly into a deep dry ditch which ran beside the road. For one moment he was certain the car was going to turn over and crush him but with an angry crack it steadied itself before sinking on its haunches like a broken-down horse. It needed no mechanic to tell him that the axle had broken under the impact.

For several moments Edward sat where he was, staring at his gloved hands which were still clenched around the steering wheel. Red drops which he knew must be blood began to stain his ulster. Gingerly, he prised off his goggles and helmet and touched his forehead. He cursed and took his hand away hurriedly. He must have cut his head on the edge of the windshield but he had no memory of doing so. An anxious-looking bewhiskered face appeared beside him.

‘You bain’t be dead then?’ the worried but rubicund face declared. ‘I’se feared you was a gonner, leastways you ought t’be.’

‘You are quite right,’ said Edward gallantly, ‘I ought to be dead. I was driving like a lunatic. I hope I did not scare you as much as I scared myself. The truth is, I had no idea there was that dip in the road. I thought I could see miles ahead.’