The Pigeon Pie Mystery (30 page)

The hostages were marched along a road strewn with bodies, some of whom they recognised. “A number were still alive, frostbitten and out of their minds.” For nearly three months they were held in five filthy rooms in Budiabad, up to ten in each one. Others slept in sheds and cellars. “We were allowed to take a little exercise, and had a few packs of playing cards. Some made backgammon boards.” In April they were moved on and stayed near Kabul in much better conditions. There was even a garden. “But our anxiety never ended.” At the end of August they were moved again, this time to Bamian and back to squalor. They were finally rescued in September.

“My husband also survived, but died two years later in battle,” she said, her head lowered. “I never married again. The pain of losing him was too great.”

There was silence as Lady Montfort Bebb’s gaze drifted back to the window. The other women looked at the tablecloth.

All the time that they were held hostage, they never knew whether they were going to be killed from one day to the next, she continued. It was the simple things she missed most, such as playing the piano. She had never been particularly proficient, and vowed to take lessons if she lived. Once released, such was her guilt for having survived, she devoted herself to charity work, which she still carried out. “The day I stop will be the day I die.”

It was only recently, on realising that she was towards the end of her life, that she remembered the promise she had made to
herself, and she started taking piano lessons. “Each time I play, I play in memory of those sixteen thousand people who were butchered or froze to death, and I hope they would think I had done something worthwhile with my life which fate, for some reason, spared,” she said.

DR. HENDERSON WAS WASHING HIS
thermometer, wondering what to wear to the fancy dress ball, when Mrs. Boots shot in and sat down in the chair in front of his desk.

“I fear there’s something awful wrong with me, doctor,” she said, her eyes wide.

Once her coughing had subsided, he listened to her lungs. Returning to his seat, he advised immediate bed rest, as well as frequent applications of mustard and linseed poultices to the back and front of the chest. “Each should be left in place for at least half an hour, followed by fresh ones every three or four hours. And take some antimonial wine if you have difficulty bringing up the expectoration, Mrs. Boots,” he added, picking up his pen.

The housekeeper looked at him in horror. “I can’t be taking to my bed, doctor, I’ve got too much to do, what with the residents breaking the rules and my having to deal with all their complaints. I’ve got one lady moaning that her kitchen is across a draughty courtyard and her cook is threatening to leave, and another is convinced that people are bathing naked in the Thames in front of her window.”

The doctor started writing out a prescription. “You need a few days’ rest, Mrs. Boots.”

The housekeeper leant forward. “It’s worse than you think, doctor,” she insisted.

“How so?” he asked, looking up.

The housekeeper lurched back, gripping her armrests. “I’m seeing things!”

“I’m aware of the recent spate of hauntings at the palace, but such visions are not injurious to the health.”

“It’s not ghosts I’m seeing.”

“What is it?”

The housekeeper blinked. “A monkey.”

Dr. Henderson tapped his pen on his desk. “Have you had hallucinations before?” he enquired.

“Several times, doctor,” she said, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her. “And it’s always the same. A monkey in red velvet trousers sitting on one of the chimney pots.”

“While I’ve advised taking sherry in the past, Mrs. Boots, you must not overdo it. Inebriation is a terrible thing. Too much drink leads to full workhouses, prisons, and asylums, to say nothing of crime, poverty, and mental degeneration. The wholesome benefits of sherry can only be reaped by taking it in moderation, and by making sure you purchase it from a reputable merchant, otherwise there is the risk of adulteration. In retrospect I would suggest that you stay clear of antimonial wine,” he said, making out a prescription for camphorated tincture of opium instead. “This is just as effective,” he added, handing it to her. “Let’s hope that the only monkeys you see in the future are those at the zoo, Mrs. Boots.”

Once the housekeeper had left, Dr. Henderson looked up to see the Reverend Grayling in a black suit and white clergical collar entering stiffly. The doctor tried to repress his antipathy of the man. It was bad enough that he refused to heed his warnings about drinking too much, as he was sailing perilously close to gout. But what incensed him more was the clergyman’s endorsement of quack remedies, an infuriating habit of ministers of the Church, whom the doctor believed ought to stick to the miracles in the Bible. Much to his irritation, the village chemist had just stuck in his window advertisements of nostrums bearing the chaplain’s enthusiastic pronouncements. “No clergyman worthy of his pulpit would be without Dr. Nightingale’s Voice Pills,” claimed one.
“I truly confess that I am a very great admirer of Mr. Steadfast’s Nerve Tonic, which I always take before giving a sermon,” stated another. “Gluttony is a sin, and I am trim because of Madame Maigre’s Corpulence Pills,” pronounced a third.

Holding on to both arms of the chair, the chaplain lowered his considerable girth with a grimace. “It’s my knees, doctor,” he said, looking at him through tiny spectacles. “I only just made it here.”

Asking him to roll up his trouser legs, the general practitioner walked round the desk and gave each knee a gentle squeeze, asking whether it hurt.

“Yes,” came the strangled reply.

“Thought it might,” said the doctor, returning to his seat, having resisted the urge to give them a second, much harder, pinch. “You have the worst case of housemaid’s knee that I’ve ever come across. Either you’re in need of a domestic servant, or you’ve been overdoing the praying.”

The clergyman ran a hand through his neat, grey hair. “I suppose I have been asking for forgiveness a little more than usual.”

“Oh, yes?” said the general practitioner, raising an eyebrow. “What exactly have you been up to?”

“Murder,” the chaplain replied.

The doctor, well used to being privy to his patients’ darkest secrets, kept his composure. “The General’s?” he asked.

“No, Mrs. Boots’s.”

The doctor sat up. “But I’ve only just seen her.”

“Oh, I haven’t carried it out,” he replied. “I just fantasise about it. The woman doesn’t stop meddling. She keeps locking Lord Sluggard out of the chapel. She says his hairs get on the altar cloth.”

“Lord Sluggard?” The doctor frowned. “I don’t believe I’ve met him.”

“The palace mouser. I’ve got a terrible problem with rats. And she will insist on locking up the communion wine.”

The doctor nodded. “For good reason.”

“We all have our vices, doctor, which is just as well, otherwise you and I would be out of a job.”

Dr. Henderson explained that treatment involved the application of blister plasters. The irritant they contained would cause the skin to blister, absorption would be induced, and the swelling would disappear. Resting the knees was also vital. “You’ll have to pray on your back, I’m afraid,” he said, sitting back with his fingers laced. “Just imagine you’re one of those tomb effigies in Westminster Abbey.”

Once the clergyman had hobbled out, the general practitioner set about preparing himself for his appointment at Wilderness House. After applying pomade to his hair, which instantly sprang back into curls, he put on his new frock coat and looked at himself in the mirror. He turned to one side, and then the other, but there was no escaping the impression of a tailor’s assistant suffering the consequences of a surfeit of bachelor’s cakes. He then put on his new topper, his heart falling even further as he contemplated the results, and he regretted the unquestionable sanity of his hatter.

Grabbing his pocket instrument case, he peered out of the door, hoping to avoid his housekeeper. Ever since realising that he was the object of Mrs. Nettleship’s affections, he had been trying to keep out of her way, fearing he might encourage her. But the more he ignored her, the louder she hummed, until disaster struck and she launched into song without the least regard for anyone’s feelings. As the broken notes invaded the waiting room, a cow-keeper went deaf in one ear, an ale taster’s blood pressure shot up, and a birdcage-maker declared that life was no longer worth living and left not wanting a cure.

The doctor was just about to close the front door, already congratulating himself on having made a safe getaway, when suddenly it was prevented from moving by a boot.

“You’ll be hoff seeing your patients hat the palace, I presume?” said Mrs. Nettleship, her red hair in uproar around her white widow’s cap.

“That’s right, I’d better not dilly-dally,” he replied, taking a step backwards.

Clutching her hands underneath her chin, she asked, “And ’ow his Lady Bessington?”

“Still suffering from acute pteridomania, I’m afraid, but there’s nothing much I can do about it.”

The housekeeper smiled. “Whatever that condition his, doctor, hit must ’ave been brought hon by love.”

“You’re quite right, Mrs. Nettleship, pteridomania is all to do with love. Specifically, it’s the love of ferns. Fern madness, if you like. She’s at an advanced stage, I’m afraid. But as far as obsessions go, it’s quite harmless. It gets you out and about in the fresh air in search of specimens, which is good for the constitution,” he added, starting down the garden path.

The housekeeper ran to catch up with him. “Love for an holder woman, particularly one what’s already lost ’er first ’usband, needs to be ’andled with the most tender hof care. But I fear things haren’t progressing, doctor. A widow hin such a position naturally thinks of matrimony.”

Dr. Henderson turned to her. “Things are certainly not progressing, Mrs. Nettleship, and it pains me to say this, but they never will. You must understand that.”

She clutched his arm. “Maybe there’s something I can do to ’elp,” she said. “Per’aps I could see hif that new ’atter of yours will give you your money back?”

“There is absolutely nothing you can do,” he replied, shaking himself free. “You really must desist. There is nothing between us. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must press on,” he added, striding off.

“I won’t give hup, doctor,” she called after him. “A nice young man like you deserves a widow’s hembrace.”

ONCE THE THREE LADIES HAD
left Wilderness House, Mink went in search of the palace’s biggest gossip. She eventually found Mrs. Boots in the Chapel Royal, polishing the choir stalls. The organist struck up the moment she called her name, so she tapped her on the shoulder. The resulting shriek woke Lord Sluggard and sent him fleeing from the altar in terror, his tail as stiff as a flag mast.

The housekeeper lowered herself down onto a pew, a hand over her heart. “Was that a monkey I saw running out, Your Highness?” she asked.

“No, Mrs. Boots, it was a cat,” said Mink, sitting down next to her. “What a pity it ran out. I do so love animals. If I had my way I’d have a huge menagerie.”

The housekeeper shuddered. “The only animals I like are those slaughtered and on my plate, preferably with a bit of mustard.”

Mink shook her head. “Not me, Mrs. Boots. You should have seen what I wanted to bring with me to Hampton Court Palace. Great. Fat. Hissing. Snakes.”

The housekeeper turned to her, open-mouthed.

Mink nodded. “Oh, yes. Five of them. Well, I would have started off with five, but undoubtedly one would have gone missing, and slithered away into someone’s bed. Perhaps even yours.”

Mrs. Boots slumped back.

“I must confess, I was going to sneak them in, thinking you’d never notice. But my maid explained that rules were rules, and there must be a very good reason why pets were forbidden in the palace. She asked me who I thought I was, thinking that
I
was above the regulations? Well, she had a point. No one is above the regulations.”

“No one,” agreed the stunned housekeeper, looking ahead of her, still thinking about a reptile in her bed.