Bertie and the Tinman, page 12
This wasn’t a suggestion I welcomed. I am the first to applaud the work of the men in blue, but I expect them to perform it without reference to me, except over matters of ceremony. It would be unthinkable for the Heir Apparent to become involved in a police investigation. I was once called as a witness in a case of divorce, and although my part in the sad affair was entirely innocent and trivial, I can’t begin to tell you the rumpus my appearance caused—and that was in the civil courts. Imagine the field day the press would have reporting that the Prince of Wales had been involved in a brawl on the Thames embankment. And—perhaps even more shocking—that he had been on a private visit to the Duchess of Montrose.
In hot water such as this I mix my metaphor and grasp at any straw. I deflected the Duchess by asking for a servant to be sent to Jermyn Street to see if by some miracle Captain Buckfast had escaped with his life and returned home. This was arranged. The same man was instructed to call at Marlborough House to collect a change of clothes for me.
Without much concern for the delicacy of my position, Carrie Montrose persisted. She pointed out that what I had witnessed was murder, or attempted murder at the least, and it would be next to impossible, not to say an offense, to keep it secret. The attackers ought to be apprehended as soon as possible. Captain Buckfast was a fine gentleman, a Turfite, and she had the highest regard for him. And as a loyal subject of the Crown, she could not allow the Prince of Wales to be thrown into the Thames outside her own doorstep. She had another suggestion. By a happy chance, one of her neighbors was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, “a most approachable gentleman, and totally discreet.” Wouldn’t it be sensible to speak informally to Sir Charles about the attack? He, of all people, was capable of handling the matter in the strictest confidence.
When the servant returned with news that Captain Buckfast’s apartment was in darkness, and there was no answer to the door bell, I consented to send for Warren.
This left me a desperately short time in which to change my clothes and decide how much I would tell. Should I reveal, for example, that Buckfast had spent the past week shadowing the Squire, and that our two assailants were almost certainly the men who had pursued him from Newmarket? It was bad enough having my name linked with Carrie’s, but the Squire’s as well? I shuddered.
In that divorce case I just mentioned, counsel advised me to answer the questions truthfully and volunteer nothing that was not asked. It is a sound principle.
Sir Charles Warren arrived dressed unnecessarily in full uniform, from cocked hat to high boots, and with all his decorations displayed, which at half an hour’s notice was an impressive tribute to his military training. I’d met him thus arrayed on a couple of occasions, but you don’t get much chance to assess a man when he bows and you wish him good day and move on to the next to be presented. He is a soldier, a Royal Engineer, who rose to the rank of general, and his appointment to the police was quite recent. He was brought in as Commissioner to deal more effectively with public demonstrations after his predecessor allowed the unemployed to run riot through Oxford Street, breaking windows and looting shops. Sir Charles had useful experience in Bechuanaland, dealing with unruly Boers. He is not a man to tolerate bad behavior.
We went into the dining room to eat. Sir Charles’s appearance is intimidating, but so, I am told, is mine. He has a massive mustache in the Prussian style, curling below the edges of his mouth, a truly exceptional silver-brown growth that is distractingly different in color from the hair on his head, which is jet-black and pomaded into a severe, straight line across the forehead. As if that were not sufficiently arresting, he sports a monocle that causes him to frown. However, I am perfectly capable of frowning too.
I sometimes find it expedient in dealing with generals to gain a moral victory at the outset, so I advised him that the K.C.M.G. that he correctly wore suspended from his neck was partially obscured behind his sash, which was at least half an inch broader than necessary. Surprising how often my knowledge of decorations and ceremonial comes to my aid. It quite discomposed him.
While the meal was being served, I took the opportunity to point out that Warren was fortunate to be dining with us. If our worst expectations were confirmed, he was about to eat a dead man’s dinner.
He was in the act of swallowing a piece of bread. He had to take water to help it down.
At his request, after the servants had left us, I related my story, describing the two attackers as well as I was able, but venturing no opinion as to their possible identity or purpose. I said that poor Buckfast had taken the worst of the assault and in my estimation was unconscious when he was dropped into the river. I told Warren that I was communicating this intelligence to him out of a sense of duty, and I trusted that he had due authority to start immediate inquiries—but in the strictest confidence. I said if it became public knowledge that I had been attacked and almost murdered, I wouldn’t answer for my mother the Queen’s health. Such news had been known to induce heart attacks in elderly parents.
He was on pins and needles at this. “Are you inviting me to investigate this dreadful assault myself, Your Royal Highness?”
“Who else should I ask?”
“But I am a soldier by vocation. An engineer. A surveyor. I’m not trained as a detective, sir.”
I said, “Come now, you’re the most senior policeman in the land.”
He had the effrontery to tell me, “The principal reason for my appointment, as I was informed, sir, is to marshal the police to subdue the unruly elements in society.”
Seeing red, I told him forcefully, “And I am marshalling you, sir, to find the unruly elements who viciously attacked a member of the Royal Family, and possibly killed his companion. Is that clear?”
He went so rigid that his monocle sprang out of his eye. “Crystal clear, sir.”
The Duchess said, “You don’t appear to have eaten much, Sir Charles. Would you care for some horseradish sauce on that?”
He said, “No thank you. It would not restore my appetite.”
He left soon after.
I thought it judicious at this stage of the evening to announce that I could not remain much longer. Carrie took it in good part and escorted me to her smoking room for a final cigar. She enjoys a smoke as much as I. It was a large room, wainscoted halfway in dark oak and hung with all manner of racing paraphernalia, jockey’s silks in the all scarlet, whips, stirrups, framed race cards and portraits of her notable winners—though she has yet to win a classic, the famous Sefton having belonged to her late husband.
As she poured me a cognac, she remarked, “I made an ass of myself earlier—a regular moke.”
I said graciously, “I shall remember only how kind you were.”
She sighed heavily and said, “I’ve buried two good husbands and I ought to be satisfied.”
I felt unable to comment on that.
She added, “I’m impossibly high-spirited.”
I said, “Not at all.”
We were silent for a while. Then she said, “Tell me, Bertie, what was your purpose in coming here?”
My purpose in coming here? It seemed remote now, and no longer of any importance. “I wanted to talk to you about Archer.” “Poor Fred?” She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eye. “I don’t know if I can bear to talk about Fred.”
I said, “In that case, please don’t.”
She pressed the handkerchief to her nose and blew into it. “We had an understanding, Fred and I. We each had great losses to bear.”
I said insensitively, “He was a heavy gambler.” You see, my mind was elsewhere, following Sir Charles Warren on the trail of two assassins.
She said, “I meant bereavements.”
“Oh.”
She went on, volunteering information that I would earlier have been overjoyed to elicit. “We could have been a great comfort to each other, Fred and I.”
“Really?”
“I decided to marry him. Then he shot himself.”
I stared down into my cognac, telling myself how appalling it would be even to begin to smile. I managed to say, “Why?”
She frowned. “Why marry him?”
“No. Why did he shoot himself?”
She answered, “Everyone knows. It was the typhoid. It turned his brain.” Her eyes widened. “Didn’t it?”
I said, “Archer rode your horse, St. Mirin, in the Cambridgeshire.”
She asked, “What does that have to do with it?”
I said, “There are stories that he staked his entire career on that race.”
“I haven’t heard them.”
“He is said to have bribed Woodburn to stop the favorite.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Who told you this?”
“Arthur Somerset, the owner’s brother.”
“The Somersets ought to be brought to court for putting such lies about. Their horse shot its bolt. Why can’t they admit it? We were all beaten by a good old stayer with a bit in hand at the finish, Bertie, and I say good luck to the owner.”
After this generous tribute, I couldn’t resist saying, “Do you know who the owner is?”
“Of The Sailor Prince? Willie Gilbert.”
“He’s the registered owner.”
She tensed like a predator picking up a scent. “Are you implying that someone else was behind that damned outsider?”
“Abington Baird—the Squire.”
“What?” She dashed her brandy into the fire and hurled the glass across the room. “If that monster fixed the race, I’ll kill him. So help me God, I’ll throttle him with my bare hands!”
She looked capable of it too.
CHAPTER 12
Carrie Montrose had kindly instructed one of her servants to hail a cab, and a four-wheeler was waiting by the gate when I took leave of her. The cabdriver’s bored “Where to, guv?” told me at once that he hadn’t been advised of his passenger’s identity, which fitted my plan.
“Hoxton, if you please. The Royal Eagle Music Hall.”
“Be almost over, time we get there.”
“That’s of no consequence,” I told him forthrightly.
“All right. Keep your ’air on.”
He flicked the whip and we trundled off. I didn’t mind missing the whole of the bill, so long as I was in time to catch Myrtle Bliss before she left. I had not forgotten, you see, that the Squire had invited Myrtle to Bedford Lodge on the morrow, Sunday, and she had offered, in her quaint, lavender-scented note, to tell me what happened. I’d been inclined to spurn the offer until this evening, when Charlie had returned from Newmarket with the Squire’s men in hot pursuit. After that, Myrtle’s help became essential to my purpose. Not only would I agree to her proposal; I would persuade her to be more than a mere observer—to act, in effect, as my spy. I meant to have the names of the murderous pair at all costs, and with due respect to Sir Charles Warren and the Metropolitan Police, Myrtle provided my best chance.
Rest assured that I had not underestimated the risk she would be taking. I intended to warn her personally how dangerous were the Squire and his “minders.”
The crone on guard at the stage door remembered me—or the sov she’d taken off me on the last occasion—and went so far as to beckon me over as I stepped down. It emerged that one of the performers had asked her to find a cab, a four-wheeler at that. I informed her that mine was not for hire. I’d already instructed the driver to wait for me.
She wasn’t pleased. She reviled me with an unrepeatable obscenity, thus ensuring that she got no gratuity this time. I thrust myself past the door and inside. As luck would have it, I met Myrtle on the stairs, burdened with several cages containing her feathered troupe. Spotting me, she put them down, the better to curtsy as I thought, and instead leaned forward, kissed me lightly on the tip of my nose and said, “Lord bless you, Bertie. Just when I needed an extra pair of hands.”
I’ve cut people dead for less, but I was so relieved to see her that I merely observed, “I thought the birds remained here.”
“No, love. I finished tonight. Got to move out. Would you be a darling?”
I capitulated. I replied benignly that I was famous for being a darling. My four-wheeler was at her disposal. I carried the cages out to the street and stacked them inside.
Myrtle squeezed my arm and said, “You are a darling. There’s six more upstairs. And three perches and a trunk.”
Oh, yes, I was a darling, and no mistake, but those parrots upstairs hadn’t been told. They screeched and fluffed up their feathers and thrust their vicious beaks through the bars when my hand reached for the ring on top of the cage. Only by removing my overcoat and throwing it over each cage before I lifted it did I succeed in getting any cooperation. Then, when the birds were docile and downstairs, the cabbie started complaining. He objected to having his vehicle filled with bird cages. He wanted the parrots to travel outside, on the roof, but Myrtle was reluctant to expose them to the chill night air, a message she articulated in a few choice words that flattened the cabbie like a mangled shirt.
The trunk and perches traveled on top, and the rest of us inside, in earsplitting proximity: six large parrots or cockatoos; sundry parakeets, lovebirds and lories; and two people, one in voluminous skirts and camel’s-hump bustle. My face was within inches of a large red-and-green macaw, “a proper old softy” according to his owner, a description I ventured to think didn’t apply to his beak as he tried repeatedly to bite me through the bars. He had an obscene black tongue like a spike, and his eye was positively evil. Bertie, I thought, how do you do it? How do you keep copping it like this, when you try so hard to stay out of trouble? We were conveyed to Mile End Road and deposited with our aviary and baggage on the pavement outside the house where Myrtle lodged. I settled with the cabman. After he’d pocketed his tip, he rudely commented, “Far cry from Cheyne Walk, ain’t it?”
I sniffed and looked away.
It was close to midnight, yet the street teemed with life—predominantly life of the lowest order. I was presently hemmed in by ragged children and thin-faced women of doubtful occupation curious to look at the parrots, to know if they talked and if I would bring one out and put it on a perch. Myrtle, I should explain, had already gone inside with Cocky. My task was to guard the other birds, who in my opinion were well capable of defending themselves.
Someone remarked that I looked like the Prince of Wales, and I retorted genially that everyone said that. Another woman, over rouged and stinking of patchouli, said if I was the Prince of Wales, she was Mrs. L. (a lady of my acquaintance I prefer not to name), and wriggled her body in a most vulgar, suggestive fashion, going so far as to attempt to embrace me. Fortunately at this juncture Myrtle scythed her way through the crowd and grabbed the woman’s hair, shouting to me, “She’s got your bleedin’ watch and chain,” and sure enough, the thieving hussy had, though it would not have been of any use to her as a timepiece, for it was full of Thames water. I grabbed her wrist and recovered it, and she ran off, leaving Myrtle with a handful of black hair.
I took over the portering and by stages removed everything upstairs. By this time, I was becoming increasingly conscious of the river water I had swallowed. I asked for the bathroom and was handed a chamber pot. With a silent prayer that it would be equal to the demand, I put it to use, while Myrtle busied herself with her hat. Once I was comfortable and she presentable, we left the birds in noisy occupation and went out, pausing only to empty the pot at the communal privy in the yard—not a place to linger in.
In the quiet of a private room in a city restaurant where I occasionally treat a companion to supper, I took Myrtle completely into my confidence. Her large brown eyes regarded me steadily as I related my efforts to learn the truth about Archer’s strange death, and how I had deputed Charlie Buckfast to keep watch on the Squire. I told her quite candidly how Charlie had broken into Bedford Lodge in search of evidence and surprised two of the Squire’s men in bed together. She giggled for some time at this, until I shocked her with news of the ferocious attack in Cheyne Walk.
“He’s dead?” she said in disbelief. “Your mate Charlie Buckfast has snuffed it?”
“I’m afraid so. I saw him thrown into the river. He was in no condition to save himself.”
“Cripes.”
Myrtle didn’t indulge in false sentiment. After all, she had last described Charlie to me as an old poopstick. She had integrity, for all her rough edges.
She asked, “What did they look like, these two?”
“My dear, it wasn’t easy to see, but they fitted Charlie’s description of the men who followed him from Newmarket. A broad fellow, built like a gorilla, and a taller one, something over six foot, I’d say. They were muffled and wearing long coats.”
After a moment’s thought, she said, “So what’s it all about, Bertie? Two Mary Anns caught in bed? Is that what Charlie was killed for?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem likely. I can understand them taking offense. They might have given chase. Even attacked him. But murder—that would be excessive.”
“Are you sure it was murder?”
I nodded gravely. “They knew Charlie was out to the world when they pushed him over the Embankment.”
She was thinking again, resting her pretty chin on a small, clenched fist. “But they didn’t do you in. Why didn’t they treat you the same as Charlie?”
“I nearly drowned,” I pointed out.
She said, “They could have made sure.”
“What charitable things you say!”
She laughed and put her hand over mine. “Bertie, you know what I mean. They was after Charlie. They had no quarrel with you. You just got in the way, so they chucked you in and all.”
She was a sharp thinker, and probably right. I sighed resignedly. As the second highest in the land, it’s somewhat demeaning to admit that you got in the way, so you were chucked in and all, but that, express it how you will, was the likeliest explanation.
