Death Sits Down to Dinner (20 page)

How interesting,
thought Clementine,
someone has made an indelible impression on Maud Cunard about the importance of not discussing Sir Reginald’s murder. Of course we were all warned off, but I thought Maud Cunard was irrepressible. What a surprise.

*   *   *

Supper at the Savoy was far from fun as Lord Montfort put his foot down and declined an invitation to join the Marchioness of Ripon’s larger party. The six of them took a table on the edge of things but with a good view of the fashionable world at supper.

They were joined by Lady Shackleton and Clarence Tavistock, and right behind them was Sir Thomas Beecham, urbane and consciously unaware that all eyes in the dining room had turned to him. On his arm was Lady Ripon, who positively towered over him; dazzling and glossy, her flawless white shoulders and magnificent bosom were perfectly displayed by a garnet-red dress that clung to the edges of her superb figure. As they passed, a flurry of talk and excited whispers followed them.

Goodness me,
thought Clementine,
how exhausting it must be to be so sought after and invited everywhere.

And then turning in her chair she found Mr. Churchill standing at her elbow, bowing and smiling and saying dear lady.

But it was not for Clementine that he had come to their table. As soon as he had greeted her, and he did so with his habitual expansive geniality, he took Lady Ryderwood’s hand in his and bent over to kiss it, unashamedly showing off his balding crown.

Interesting,
thought Clementine, as she took this in.
It seems Lady Ryderwood has a distinct crush on Mr. Churchill, or maybe it’s the other way around. I hope she is aware how fierce Mrs. Churchill is about these little things.
She took in the rosy flush to Lady Ryderwood’s cheeks and noticed that her large, dark eyes were quite brilliant as she looked up at the man bending over her chair.

Lady Ryderwood was too restrained in manner to behave like an obvious flirt. During her brief conversation with Mr. Churchill she turned her head up to look at him and listened gravely without a trace of affectation to what he had to say. But her responses were made with emphasis, and she looked directly into Churchill’s eyes, her own bright and alive with interest. Clementine was impressed.
There is certainly a difference between flattering a man with ready laughter and breathless chatter and the direct, unswerving interest that Lady Ryderwood is bestowing
. And it had its effect. Mr. Churchill eventually straightened up with demonstrable reluctance and must have said something amusing, because Lady Ryderwood opened her delighted mouth and laughed, showing pretty white teeth. And then with her characteristic composure she said good night to Mr. Churchill and turned to Lord Montfort as she lifted a glass of champagne and took a sip.

Clementine transferred her attention to Mr. Greenberg, who was seated to her right. He was such an unpretentious man, with an agreeably light and playful manner, that she found it easy to enjoy their chitchat about the opera: whether Sir Thomas would ever welcome Nellie Melba to sing at Covent Garden again, and if he did, would she accept?—since their feud was of a long-standing and bitter nature. When they had finished with this diverting topic, she thought it time to direct their conversation to what had happened on the night of Hermione’s dinner party.

“It must have been the most terrible thing to discover, Lady Montfort.” There was no prurient interest but genuine sympathy from Mr. Greenberg when she referred to the untimely and shocking death of Sir Reginald.

“Yes, it was actually, quite awful. The image is beginning to fade, but…” She lifted her hands palm-upward in resignation. “There are other parts of the evening that I find have stuck quite vividly in my mind and others that are a complete blank, which makes the experience rather disconnected and troubling. Do you mind if I ask you something about that time? You see, I find if I talk about it a little, it takes away some of the dread.” She waited to be snubbed, but Mr. Greenberg, although no doubt cautioned as they had all been not to gossip, played by his own rules.

“No, I completely understand.” He took an oyster, neatly lifted it off its shell and popped it into his mouth. He closed his eyes briefly and said, “North Sea, Orkney probably; always so much brinier than those from the south coast.”

“Is there a discernible difference?” She took an oyster. “I can never tell.”

“Yes, a considerable difference; try eating them without the mignonette, or lemon or all those other bits and pieces, then you will taste the oyster. Now what were you saying about the other evening?” He consumed several oysters with his eyes closed and then opened them and turned courteously to her.

“Well, when you left the dining room the other night, can you remember where everyone was, all the men I mean?”

“No, not really, but I will try. I think your husband, Sir Henry, and that young flying officer walked straight up the stairs to join you in the salon. I know Mr. Churchill hurried off to the library to use the telephone; he was the first to leave us. And Captain Vetiver stayed behind in the dining room to talk to Sir Reginald. I spent a little time in the hall with Sir Vivian Hussey, he wanted to talk about Royal Opera House business; have you any idea how expensive that place is to run? It’s outrageous…”

Clementine did not want to hear about the Royal Opera House or its business, as she had spent nearly three hours in it and that was more than enough.

“But you didn’t talk to Sir Vivian for long, because he came into the salon after my husband.”

“Yes, that’s right. So what did I do then? Oh yes, now I remember, I talked to Tricky.”

Clementine smiled, what a perfect name for young Trevor Tricklebank.

“Tricky? Oh good heavens, is that what he is called? Tricky! It is a perfectly splendid name for him. I wonder if Hermione knows!” Clementine laughed at the thought of Hermione’s affable twit of a nephew, with his continual ability to charm the old lady and at the same time make no effort to fulfill his obligations as her only surviving family member.

“I am quite sure Trevor has been called Tricky ever since his days at Harrow. We talked of money, what else?” He laughed, sharing the joke with her that he was sought after because of his prowess for making lots of it. “Everyone is worried about money these days, thanks to the exorbitant taxes we pay.”

“I don’t know how they manage their allowances at all, these young men with their highly expensive way of life” said Clementine, carefully guiding the conversation back to Tricky.

“Well, they gamble a good deal, a big win here and there. Hopefully they don’t touch their capital.” Mr. Greenberg shook his head at the profligacy of the financially unenlightened and ate another oyster.

“So you stayed downstairs with Tricky, sorted out his financial affairs, and kept him company.”

“Until Miss Wells-Thornton came down so they might leave for another party together.” He smiled at her and she thought for a moment that he winked an eye.

“So you
saw
them leave, then?” Clementine knew she was now pushing the limit, but Mr. Greenberg seemed not in the least put out.

“Yes, I saw them leave. I walked outside with them to get a breath of air. Mr. Tricklebank put Miss Wells-Thornton into his motorcar and told the driver to take her on to her party. And then he said he would hail a taxicab, and off he walked into the night.”

“But surely he was supposed to be going on with Miss Wells-Thornton!” Clementine pretended to be shocked.

“And that is why he is called Tricky, my dear Lady Montfort, because that is what he told his aunt so he could leave what was doubtless a boring evening for him, and go off and enjoy the town in his own way.” It was quite clear that Mr. Greenberg approved of Tricky’s tactics, and he laughed in approval of his naughtiness to his aunt, and Clementine laughed, too. It was so entirely typical that an aging old lady who controlled the lives of countless people could be so easily duped by the one person she doted on.

“What about Captain Vetiver? Was he still in the dining room alone with Sir Reginald?”

“I have no idea at all about Captain Vetiver.” Clementine distinctly got the impression that Aaron Greenberg had no interest at all in the captain. “The dining-room door was closed and one of the footmen said that Sir Reginald had made it clear not to disturb them until he rang.”

A waiter filled their glasses with champagne and they thoughtfully sipped for a moment or two.

“The footman said ‘them’?”

“Yes, the footman said ‘them.’” He caught her eye and shook his head. “But Vetiver is not the type, my dear Lady Montfort, to do something as distasteful as stab a guest in someone else’s house—he is far too nice for that. It was an act of brutality, and Vetiver is too correct, too clean, too much of a hand-washer.” Mr. Greenberg laid down his fork and lifted his glass.

“Well, who then?” Her straightforward question made him laugh.

“Now don’t try to lure me into playing
that
game—you remember, my dear Lady Montfort, we have been told we mustn’t chatter about what happened that night. Of course I am assuming
they
meant talking to people who were not present at Winston’s birthday party, otherwise we would be guilty of doing something like breaking the Official Secrets Act.” He took a contemplative sip from his glass. “No, I think some socialist got in through the dining-room window. Hermione should have hired a porter for the front door, a big brawny chap with a nice stout truncheon. A shame all around really. Lady Ryderwood’s voice is superb and we were only treated to one song, and Miss Gaskell’s playing was so simpatico
.
”

Mr. Greenberg popped another oyster into his mouth, and said more to himself than to her, “Mmm … like kissing the sea on the lips.” And Clementine, for the first time in years, blushed.

Chapter Seventeen

Clementine was feeling a little jaded, as she had drunk far too much champagne the night before and had come to the conclusion that getting into bed at three o’clock in the morning several nights in a row was regrettably a thing of the past.
Really, time spent in town is sometimes such hard work,
she thought crossly as she sipped black coffee with lots of sugar, in the hope of stilling her pounding head.
I almost wish I were returning to the country with Ralph.

If she had not had quite so much champagne, the evening would have been perfect. Both Aaron Greenberg and Veda Ryderwood were wonderful company. Mr. Greenberg, a deft and witty raconteur, had kept them entertained with lively tales of his early banking days in Istanbul and Paris, his handsome head thrown back to laugh at his youthful naïveté at the hands of the world’s most formidable banking sharks. And surprisingly Lady Ryderwood, in her own gentle, unassuming way, had recounted stories from her earlier life in the Balearics, of trips to Seville in Andalusia for the gypsy festivals.

With the onset of a headache that would accompany her day, Clementine remembered she had made a rash promise to ride with Lady Ryderwood the following morning and was beginning to regret the thought of getting on a strange horse and cantering up and down Rotten Row with possibly the entire Household Cavalry for company.
What could she have been thinking?
She looked across the room at the upright figure of her housekeeper, who had arrived with her coffee and was standing by the door with ill-concealed zeal as she waited for Clementine to begin their meeting.

Mrs. Jackson, alert and well rested, had the clear-eyed intensity of one who has enjoyed a full eight hours of untroubled sleep and is obviously brimming with information.
Let her go first then,
thought Clementine. She finished her coffee and nodded a world-weary head at her housekeeper. “Go on, Jackson, I can tell your visit to Kingsley House must have been a good one.”

“Yes, it was indeed, m’lady, most informative. My visit was primarily with Matron, but I had an opportunity to talk to several of the boys.” Here she looked down at her hands, and Clementine suspected that things with Matron had not gone smoothly. Mrs. Jackson rarely revealed her feelings, but in Clementine’s considerable experience her housekeeper’s rigid demeanor was easily translated into one of distaste.

“And what is Matron like?” Clementine encouraged her housekeeper to elucidate.

“She is a rather interesting individual, m’lady. The place is well run, but the boys are scared of her. At the end of my visit she was rather challenging, accused me of snooping, which of course I suppose I was. It was altogether rather unpleasant.”

So that’s it,
thought Clementine, as she picked up on the faintest note of contempt in her housekeeper’s voice.
Matron is a bully, a fault that Jackson finds unforgivable
.

“She was challenging, Jackson? Now that’s interesting. So she is sensitive about people knowing what’s going on in her bailiwick, is she? Do you think she was concealing something?”

“Perhaps a
little
overprotective, m’lady, but more usefully she is a gossip. She made it clear she believes that Miss Gaskell is out to catch a husband in Miss Kingsley’s house and that she had set her sights on Sir Reginald. Who, as Matron made quite clear, was dedicated to his position as governor on the board of the charity and with no time for Miss Gaskell at all. But I was also able to confirm that the photograph under Miss Gaskell’s pillow was indeed a likeness of Sir Reginald Cholmondeley, as there is a portrait of him hanging in the hall of Kingsley House.”

She went on to fill Clementine in on her conversation with the candidate pages for the charity evening and her final conversation with Arthur Symes, winding up with a brief account of Matron’s aggressiveness at what she perceived was Mrs. Jackson’s unorthodox questions of the boys she had interviewed.

“And that’s not all, m’lady. Almost as soon as I got back to Chester Square I was told Mr. Tricklebank had been taken off by the police, because he had lied about where he had been when Sir Reginald was murdered.”