By Royal Command (13 page)

‘Dandy’s always in trouble,’ said Roan. ‘He loves a drink and he can’t walk away from a fight.’

‘Listen to her, James,’ said Dandy. ‘As if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. To hear her talk you’d think she was a saint, but I’m sure you know her well enough to know she’s no shrinking violet. I’ve seen her deck three men with one punch.’

‘Ah, now you’re exaggerating, Dandy. It was one punch and a kick.’

‘She’s got a wicked kick on her, James. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of her.’

Dandy took a big folding knife out of his pocket and used it to cut himself some slices of hard cheese. The knife put James’s penknife to shame. It looked like a hunter’s weapon, big and powerful, with a blade that had been lovingly sharpened. Suddenly, all his preparations, stitching the razor-blades and tools into his coat-tails, seemed pathetic.

‘You’re staring at me knife, I see, Bucko,’ said Dandy, eating the cheese off its blade. ‘What is it with boys and knives? Are you wondering if I know how to use it, perhaps?’

‘Well…’

Without another word Dandy suddenly flipped the knife expertly in his hand so that he was holding it by the tip of its blade then tossed it hard at James.

James froze, but the knife flew harmlessly past his ear and he heard a dull thud as it embedded itself in a tree.

He looked round; the knife was gently quivering.

Roan laughed.

‘He didn’t even flinch,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to try harder than that to put the wind up this one, Dandy.’

Dandy laughed as well and went to fetch the knife.

‘Don’t pay him no never-mind, James,’ said Roan. ‘He’s never hit anyone yet. That’s his party trick. You were supposed to yell and duck.’

‘You gave me the old stone face,’ said Dandy, wrenching the knife out of the tree with a grunt. He wiped it on his sleeve and passed it to James.

James felt the weight of it in his hand. If he had someone like Dandy by his side The Invisible Man would be no threat.

‘That was a good shot,’ he said.

‘Maybe I should join a circus, eh?’ said Dandy, and he sprang on to his hands and walked upside-down across the clearing while Roan clapped and laughed.

James felt a pang of jealousy. Why couldn’t he make Roan laugh like that? He knew better than to try right at this moment, though – that would only make him seem desperate. The last thing he wanted was to look like he was trying too hard.

Besides, there was no competition. Dandy was older. He was a man. James was just a boy.

Dammit
. Sitting in the Bentley, revving the engine and dreaming of the open road he had felt grown up, on top of the world, ready to face anything.

He passed the knife back to Dandy who put it in his pocket.

‘I don’t suppose they teach you knife throwing at school,’ Dandy said.

‘No,’ said James. ‘But there is the Corps. We train to be soldiers. There’s shooting…’

‘Sure, and marching and saluting and polishing your boots,’ said Dandy. ‘I know all about the army. I know all about training you boys to be good soldiers, to be able to march to some foreign land and shoot the natives. To die for King and country.’

‘Leave him alone, Dandy,’ said Roan. ‘Don’t tease the boy.’

‘Who’s teasing?’ said Dandy with mock indignation. ‘Besides, he’s old enough to stick up for himself. Isn’t that right, Bucko?’

‘I suppose so,’ said James. Though he didn’t feel very old right at that moment. He looked away, trying to hide the confused emotions that he was sure were playing on his face.

And that was when he saw him. Ducking behind a tree.

The Invisible Man.

14

By Royal Command

James tensed, becoming alert, like a dog that had caught a scent.

‘What is it?’ said Dandy, who had noticed the change in him.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ said James, peering into the gloom beneath the trees. ‘I just thought there was someone there for a moment.’

‘It’s a public place, Bucko, there’s lots of people about.’

‘No,’ said James. ‘It’ll sound ridiculous, I know, but I think someone’s been following me. Spying on me.’

‘A boy from the school, you mean?’

‘No… I don’t know. A man.’

‘Spying on you? Now who would want to spy on you?’

‘I’m probably just imagining it,’ said James.

‘Well, let’s go and find out,’ said Dandy, and he was up on his feet before James could say anything else. ‘Which way did he go?’

‘There… Among the trees…’

Dandy stalked off in the direction that James was pointing. James ran to his side and kept pace with him.

‘And just what are we looking for?’ said Dandy.

‘A man,’ said James. ‘He wears a trilby.’

‘Most men do,’ said Dandy. ‘Can you narrow it down a little?’

‘Not really, no,’ said James. ‘I’ve never seen him up close.’

A movement caught James’s eye and he turned to see a figure flitting from tree to tree some distance away.

‘There he is!’ he shouted and set off at a run.

The two of them pounded deeper into the woods, their footsteps dulled to muffled thumps by the thick carpet of leaf mould on the ground. They split up and crashed through the undergrowth, keeping watch for any movement.

They could find no sign of the man, however, and both soon slowed to a walk.

James headed towards Dandy. It was dark under the closely planted trees and very quiet. James was about to say something when Dandy put a hand on his arm.

‘Hold still,’ he whispered. ‘Listen… we might hear him.’

They stood there, unmoving. James was aware of the deep stillness in the woods. There seemed to be no birds or wildlife of any kind here. All he could hear was Dandy’s breathing.

He took a couple of paces away from the Irishman, peering between the grey tree trunks.

Nothing
.

Eventually he shook his head and turned around.

Dandy was standing with his knife open in his hand. There was an animal intensity about him and James saw him in a very different light. He looked as if he could have stepped out of a history book; he was every inch the wild Irish warrior, stalking the forest for deer. Roan had said he liked to fight, but what exactly was he intending to do with that long blade of his?

There was a heavy, expectant mood. The air hung lifeless in the branches of the trees. Dandy stepped closer to James.

Then there was a shout and the mood was broken. It was a girl’s voice, calling for help, and James’s first thought was that it must be Roan.

‘Who was that?’ he said, and headed towards the sound.

He came to a thicket of brambles, then some densely packed rhododendrons. He fought his way through. There was a stand of oak trees on the other side, and past them a straggly hedge. Beyond the hedge he could see a large, square house, painted pale pink. He stuck his head through the hedge and took a proper look. Two little girls in matching red tartan skirts were playing badminton on a large, well-kept lawn. The older of the two shouted towards him.

‘Hello,’ she said. She had a mop of curly hair and a rather serious expression on her face. ‘We’ve lost our shuttlecock. Did you see it come over your way?’

‘No,’ said James, ‘but I’ll have a look for you.’

He glanced around and saw the shuttlecock nestling in the branches of a tangled old tree.

‘Would you get it down for us?’ the girl shouted, in a manner that told James she was used to getting her way.

He quickly scrambled up and tossed the shuttlecock over to the girls.

‘Thank you ever so much,’ said the older girl. She couldn’t have been much more than eight years old, but seemed terribly grown-up for her age. ‘You are a very kind boy.’

‘Lilibet always hits it too hard,’ said her younger sister, who was a pretty little thing and lacked her big sister’s seriousness.

‘It was no problem,’ James called down from his perch in the tree.

‘You are frightfully good at climbing trees,’ said the little sister.

James shrugged.

‘I should like to climb trees,’ said Lilibet. ‘But Crawfie won’t let us.’

‘Who’s Crawfie?’

‘Our governess.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t always do exactly what Crawfie says.’

The girls laughed and ran off back to their game as James swung down from the tree and found Dandy waiting at the bottom with Roan.

Dandy had put his knife away.

‘Come along,’ said Roan. ‘We should be getting back. I don’t want you to get into any trouble, James.’

Dandy had a small open-backed lorry with the Eton crest on the side. He stowed the picnic things in the rear and offered Roan and James a lift back to the school. The three of them crammed into the cabin, James squashed between Dandy and Roan.

‘Well, you certainly made a very useful friend there, Bucko,’ said Dandy, once they were under way.

‘Do you think so?’ said James. ‘She was only a little girl.’

‘Only a little girl, he says. If things had been just a tiny bit different, she’d be our next queen.’

‘What do you mean?’ said James.

‘You really don’t have any idea who you were just chatting to friendly as you please?’ said Roan.

‘No, they looked vaguely familiar, but…’

‘They were the royal princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. Their father is the Duke of York and their uncle is Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor – the Prince of Wales – your future king.’

‘You mean that was Windsor Lodge?’

‘The very same.’ Dandy laughed and elbowed James in the side. ‘James Bond, by Royal Command.’

‘They seemed quite ordinary,’ said James.

‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Dandy.

‘Now that you’re pals with the Royal Family,’ said Roan, ‘I suppose you’ll be too high and mighty for the likes of us.’

‘Come off it,’ said James. ‘I don’t expect I’ll ever meet a single one of them ever again.’

‘But who on earth would want to kill you?’

‘If I could answer that question I’d be a step closer to knowing what was going on.’

James was sitting in his room with Pritpal and Tommy. They were eating toast with anchovies and listening to a programme of popular songs on Tommy’s radio; Al Bowlly was singing ‘The Very Thought Of You’. James had had to prepare tea for Theo Bentinck earlier and there had been the end of a loaf of fresh, crusty bread left over. Bentinck had told James to throw it out, but instead he had brought it up here and they had toasted it for themselves.

‘If I didn’t know you better, James,’ said Tommy, ‘I’d think you were making it up.’

‘If only,’ said James. ‘I thought at first I might be imagining it. But not any more.’

‘At the risk of repeating myself,’ said Pritpal. ‘Why would anyone want to kill you?’

‘And at the risk of repeating
myself
,’ said James. ‘I have no idea.’

‘It was not a rhetorical question,’ said Pritpal. ‘We need to analyse the situation. Let us think clearly, and try to work it out; what possible reason could anyone have for murdering you?’

‘I see what you’re driving at,’ said James. ‘OK… It could be someone I’ve upset in the past; there are plenty of them knocking about. It could be something I’ve done, something I know, something… dammit, Pritpal, it could be anything!’

‘Did anything happen to you in Austria?’

‘Apart from falling down a mountain, not a lot.’

‘Did you meet anyone odd?’

‘No… Unless you count Graf von Schlick.’

‘He sounds pretty bloody odd,’ snorted Tommy. ‘Who is he?’

‘He was a patient in the clinic I ended up at,’ said James. ‘I only mention him because he sticks in my mind.’

‘Why does he stick in your mind?’

‘It was late at night. He was in pain, raving. Shouting about how someone wanted to kill his cousin.’

‘Ah – so you are not the only one in danger,’ said Pritpal, with mock seriousness. ‘Graf von Schlick’s cousin is also at risk.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought much of it,’ said James, ‘except his manservant came in. A creep and a thug. There was a real air of menace about him. Afterwards, when I went back to say goodbye to Miles Langton-Herring I saw the Graf again. Only this time his bandages were off, and he looked at me like…’

‘Like what?’ Tommy interrupted.

‘Like he knew me.’

‘Well, he did,’ said Pritpal. ‘He had met you that previous night.’

‘Oh, I can’t explain it,’ said James. ‘The whole thing was just not quite right somehow.’

‘And it was after that you started seeing The Invisible Man?’

‘No,’ said James. ‘I’m pretty sure I first spotted him on the way to Kitzbühel.’

‘So the two things cannot possibly be connected,’ said Pritpal.

‘I don’t suppose so,’ said James. ‘If I hadn’t had my misadventure with Miles, I would never have ended up in the hospital. I would never have heard the Graf raving about his cousin.’

‘Who is his cousin?’ said Tommy.

‘He’s called Jürgen ,’ said James. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘Ach, my poor cousin Jürgen ,’ said Tommy, with a dreadful German accent. ‘Zey are going to blow him to smizzereens!’

The other two laughed at Tommy’s half-Chinese half-German pronunciation, and they were still laughing when the door opened and Theo Bentinck walked in.

‘What are you laughing at?’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s a crime to laugh now, is it?’ said James.

‘It depends on what you were laughing at,’ said Bentinck.

‘Well, you can rest assured we weren’t laughing at you,’ said James.

Bentinck looked around James’s room with some distaste, his small mouth pulled tight. His eyes widened as he spotted the remains of his loaf.

‘That is my bread,’ he said.

‘You were going to throw it out, if you remember?’ said James.

‘That’s not the point,’ said Bentinck. ‘It’s been stolen.’

‘No it hasn’t.’

‘Who took it?’

‘You know perfectly well who took it,’ said James. ‘I was tidying up, and –’

‘Be quiet,’ said Bentinck. ‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ He shifted his gaze to Tommy. ‘Did you take it?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Tommy sheepishly, and Bentinck turned his attention to Pritpal. ‘What about you?’

Pritpal wasn’t sure what to say. He glanced at James.

‘Leave them out of this,’ said James. ‘I took it.’

But Bentinck still had his eyes fixed on Pritpal. ‘Have you been eating it?’ he said.

Pritpal still had a corner of toast in his hand, so he could hardly deny it. He nodded his head.

‘You have been eating my stolen bread.’

‘It’s not stolen,’ said James. ‘You were going to throw it away. I didn’t like to see it go to waste.’

‘It strikes me that all three of you are guilty,’ said Bentinck, ignoring James.

James flushed with anger and jumped to his feet.

‘If you have your heart set on punishing someone, then punish me,’ he said hotly.

‘No,’ said Bentinck, clearly enjoying himself. ‘I don’t think I will. You three are messmates. From now on I will hold you all equally responsible if any one of you steps out of line. Have you got that, James Bond? If
you
do anything wrong, then I will beat one of these two.’

‘But that’s not fair,’ said James.

‘Isn’t it?’ Bentinck grinned. ‘Here at Codrose House we are trying to build team spirit and responsibility towards each other. From now on you are responsible for these two. You may think you’re tough enough not to be bothered by another beating, but let’s see how this pair of saps like it. You, Nandra, come up to Library for your punishment.’

James was so angry he didn’t know what to say, and, when Bentinck crooked his finger at the petrified Pritpal, he exploded. He pushed his way between the two boys and shoved Bentinck hard into the corridor.

‘You keep your hands off Pritpal,’ he said.

‘Just for that,’ said Bentinck, ‘I’m going to thrash both of them.’

James raised his fist but Tommy stopped him.

‘Don’t,’ he said, walking out of the room. ‘You’re only making things worse.’

James stood there quivering with rage. All he could do was watch as Tommy and Pritpal followed Bentinck towards Library.