Lord Foxbridge Butts In (13 page)

“Which argues a certain facility or custom to killing,” I considered that facet, “Or just a very quick mind.”

“I am assuming the killer
is
a professional, it was so neatly done.  To turn a man’s head around like that takes a lot of skill, you can’t just walk up to a bloke and break his neck for him.  You have to be quick as a mongoose to do it before the other chap thinks to defend himself, or even to tense his neck muscles.”

“But do professional killers have squabbles about paltry inheritances and then bump off their own brothers?”

“
If
we’re assuming that the dead bloke is one of the two men you heard talking,” Twister craned his head around to look at me, as my perambulations had taken me behind his chair, “Then I wouldn’t think so.  However, if the two brothers were there to kill a third bloke, and got to bickering once they’d done it, the setup makes more sense.”

“Oh, but that’s
terribly
clever!” I enthused, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you have a brilliant but woefully undisciplined mind, Foxy,” Twister turned back around and reached for the teapot, “You got it into your nut that two men went in and one went out, and that the conversation was the cause of the murder; and so you didn’t think of any other options while you were haring off after linguists at the Oxford & Cambridge.”

“You sound like my schoolmaster,” I drawled to hide the little thrill I’d felt when he said I was brilliant, storing away the compliment for later delectation, “‘Bright but lacks discipline,’ my reports home always said.”

“And Oxford apparently didn’t discipline you enough,” he shrugged, “That’s what makes you a dilettante instead of a professional.”

“I thought it was my inherent laziness,” I perched on the arm of his chair and reached across him to grab a fresh lemon slice for his tea, “Or that I’m too young and pretty to be taken seriously.”

“You aren’t
lazy
by any means,” he said, and he was so close I felt his breath through my shirt-sleeve, “You showed a lot of energy and application in hunting out that office and getting your translation done.  And you are terribly
persistent
about trying to seduce me.”

“Trying?” I looked down at him, smouldering for all I was worth, “If I was
trying
, I would have done it by now.”

“Says you,” he laughed, pushing me gently but firmly away so that I had to leap to my feet or fall on my backside.

“Says me,” I promised him.

“Well,” he stood up decisively and picked up his hat, “I’d better get back to the office and see what they’ve found out while I’ve been sitting here sipping your tea.”

“Don’t forget your copy of my notes,” I went over to the desk to get the envelope I’d set aside for him.  He didn’t really need them, since I’d already got them translated; but it had been a bit of a sweat writing it all out twice, and I didn’t want my work to go to waste.

“Thanks, Foxy,” he shook my hand warmly when I handed over the envelope, “I really do appreciate your efforts on the Yard’s behalf, even if they were indiscreetly done, and merely to satisfy your own pathological curiosity.”

“The
things
you say, Sergeant,” I made a camp curtsey, “Like to turn a girl’s head.”

He laughed rather louder than the joke deserved and went off on his way, leaving me with quite a lot on my mind.

I realized, rather too late, that I’d started getting dressed too early.  I had nothing really to do between Twister’s departure and when I could reasonably go downstairs, and I didn’t want to crease my trousers or rumple my shirt, nor did I want to change clothes to go out and then come back and change again.  Eventually I just arranged myself carefully on the sofa so as to not muss my clothes, and dove into a book — one of Mrs. Christie’s  masterpieces, to bring my frames of reference back up to a higher standard than the pulps.

When my little mantel-clock struck seven, I got up and went into my bedroom to finish dressing, vaguely wondering where Pond had got to, but sure that I still remembered how to link my own cuffs; however, I didn’t even get the wardrobe door opened before Pond materialized beside me.

“How do you
do
that?” I asked him, partly fascinated and partly annoyed.

“How do I do what, my lord?” he gently pushed me away from the wardrobe and in front of the cheval glass so he could work on me.

“How do you pop up out of a trap right when I’m about to need you?” I expanded the question.

“I’m an experienced servant, my lord,” he explained, sliding my waistcoat over my shoulders, “I’ve been in service since the age of twelve, beginning as page in the house where my father was butler.  One develops a sort of sixth sense.  Just as a doctor can diagnose an ailment by looking at his patient, a servant can diagnose a need in his employer without effort.”

“I wonder if it’s noises?” I accepted the explanation but was not entirely satisfied, “If you heard me open the wardrobe door, too quiet to notice consciously but just loud enough to trigger a subconscious response?  Or you hear me moving around in bed, or a change in my breathing, and know I’m waking up and it’s time to bring coffee?”

“That may be, my lord,” he stepped in front of me to drape my watch-chain from the button to the pocket, “I have never analyzed myself in that light.”

“If I ever meet one of those psychologist johnnies, I’ll be sure to bring him around to study you.”

“I’m sure your lordship will meet a psychologist sooner or later,” he smiled a little, looking up to tie up my tie.

“Hopefully in a
social
situation,” I laughed, “rather than being thrown in a looney bin.”

Pond didn’t answer that one, and just went about dressing me, meticulously arranging each little piece of wardrobe on my person.  I have mentioned before how restful it could be to have Pond in the room; having him dress me had become one of those soothing rituals, like trooping to chapel for morning prayers at school, that I sometimes chafed at but always eventually enjoyed.

It was getting on for eight when Pond performed his final brushing of my shoulders and stepped back, pronouncing me complete with a satisfied nod.  I thanked him, as I always did, went and snapped a white carnation off the arrangement in the sitting-room, and stuck it in my buttonhole as I made my way down the stairs.  I was starting to feel oddly nervous, not quite sure where I should wait, thinking about different things I might say when Miles arrived, whether I should begin my tour on the first floor or the ground floor.  It was odd for me to feel so fluttery before having dinner with a chap I fancied, but for some reason I was as twitchy as a bridegroom in a chapel vestry waiting for the bride to turn up.

When Miles arrived, finding me wandering aimlessly at the bottom of the stairs, he looked just exactly as delicious in white tie as I’d thought he would — there was no question of going to a show later: as soon as I caught sight of him, my only aim was to get through dinner and get him up to my rooms.  And if he demurred, I would just have to bean him with a champagne bottle and have him carted up in the luggage lift.

After showing him around the public rooms of the hotel, having a drink in the lounge, and then going down to dinner, I felt pretty sure I wasn’t going to have to resort to abduction to have my way with the good professor: in the more liberal atmosphere of Hyacinth House, he was able to give much freer reign to his flirting than he could at the Oxford & Cambridge, and he proved himself to be
quite
an expert — no, a
virtuoso
.

He started slowly, with a rather demure coquetry, and worked his way up to faintly suggestive banter reinforced with the sort of smouldering gazes that are Mr.
 Valentino’s specialty; by the time we got to the dessert course, he was being playfully affectionate, nudging my feet under the table and toying with my fingers.

We took our coffee and brandy in the billiards room, where he taught me a
very
interesting variation of snooker, played in tandem instead of turns, with him pressed against my back to help me line up the shots.  By the time we finished that, I was so hotted up that I almost threw him down on the snooker table to go at it right there; but there were other gentlemen in the room, and that would have been
too
unseemly, even for the Hyacinth.

When we got back to my rooms, Pond was thankfully absent, and we started in on each other immediately on closing the door, having our first round on the floor behind the sofa with most of our clothes still on, then moving to the bedroom for more measured and thorough exercises.  Miles was an absolute delight, masterful and considerate at once, and I hope I gave as good as I got; when we could do no more, he curled himself around me like a warm coat and we drifted off into blissful slumber.

I woke sometime late in the night, though, surprised to discover him gone.  I sat up and turned on the light, seeing that the few clothes he’d still had on when we made it to the bedroom were gone; but he couldn’t have been gone long, the sheets where he’d lain were still warm.  He didn’t seem like the sort to go off in the night without saying good-bye, so I became a little worried for him — I hoped he wasn’t ill or anything.

Sliding into my dressing-gown, I checked and saw he wasn’t in the bathroom; but while there, I heard a faint sound coming from the sitting-room.  However, when I turned off the bathroom light, I noticed that no light came from under the sitting-room door: if he was out there, he was moving around in the dark.  Thinking that perhaps he was wandering around trying to find a light, I opened the door and snapped the switch nearest the sill.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he looked up sadly from what he was doing, which appeared to be ransacking my desk.

“What are you doing?” I wondered, “You’re not ill, I hope.”

“No, I’m not ill,” he resumed his careful but thorough search of my desk as if I wasn’t there.

“Can I help you find something?” I was so confused by this interchange, I began to wonder if I was actually dreaming it.  One doesn’t get up in the middle of the night to find a recent bedmate fully dressed and going through one’s desk; it had an Alice-in-Wonderland absurdity to it that made me doubt its reality.

“Your original transcript of the conversation you heard in your cupboard this morning.”

“It’s in the padded morocco portfolio in the bottom right drawer,” I said, cocking my head at him. I
had
to be dreaming this.

“Thank you,” he went to the correct drawer and pulled out the portfolio, a sort of lap-desk that I used to keep my correspondence neat, “I managed to pocket the paper you brought to the club before handing over my translation, but then discovered that it was a copy.  I need the original.”

“What for?” I sat down in my favorite armchair and lit a cigarette, waiting for the narrative of this odd dream to take shape.

“I’d rather not tell you,” he turned to the fireplace and placed my pages in the grate, then applied his cigarette-lighter to them, watching closely as they burned to ash, and scattering the ashes about on the hearth.

“You didn’t want me to find out that your translation was incorrect?” I hazarded a guess.

“No, I didn’t.  How
did
you find out?” he eyed me suspiciously.

“I didn’t, I just now guessed.  It was the only reason I could think of.”

“And I just gave myself away, didn’t I,” he shook his head ruefully, putting his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the mantel.

“You shouldn't be concerned over some mistakes in a translation, any fault would most likely be my own,” I said comfortingly, then realized that it wouldn’t be a
mistake
he’d go to such lengths to cover up, but rather a
falsehood
: “You translated it incorrectly on purpose?  Why?”

“Again, I’d rather not say.”

“Did you know who the speaker was?” I pursued the question — I didn’t still think I was dreaming, as this was too rational an interchange to be in one of
my
dreams.  Nevertheless, my natural curiosity reared its head, and I started parsing the possibilities out of habit.

“Please leave it alone, Sebastian,” he said, and again his voice was so tinged with sadness that it caught me short.

“It was
you
!” I finally comprehended, and blurted it out before I could consider the ramifications of speaking, “I overheard you killing a man, and then I showed up a couple of hours later and ask you to translate yourself into English for me.  Something so unbelievable, only
I
would be capable of it.  Was that man your brother?”

“Oh, goodness no,” he laughed at me, relaxing, “I don’t have a brother.  The whole brother and mother and inheritance bit was made up.  I substituted some words and names, and it became a very different conversation.  It wasn’t even in Czech, we were speaking Bulgarian, his native tongue.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I marveled at him, “Why did you kill him?”

“I was paid to,” he answered, looking at me very thoughtfully, as if weighing his options, “I’m a professional assassin.  That creature was a very nasty man who was making expensive trouble for some other very nasty men.  I resolved their problem for them, pocketed a thousand pounds, and reduced the number of nasty men in the world by one.”