The Pigeon Pie Mystery (32 page)

In the hotel’s lounge, where potted palms stood between clusters of chairs, the Princess chose a seat by the window so that she could see the whole room. After ordering tea for three and some seed cake to keep Pooki quiet, she studied the ladies in spring hats gossiping in thickets. Several glanced at her with the usual mix of curiosity and envy, but each turned back to their conversation. The only person alone was a gentleman sitting in the far corner, his face obscured by
The Times
. He was wearing a modish nut-brown checked Duke of York lounge suit, its jacket expertly cut with square corners. On the table in front of him were the remains of a piece of shortbread. As he turned the page, she saw to her surprise that it was Cornelius B. Pilgrim, whose dress sense had hitherto left a lot to be desired. As she continued to look at him he held her gaze and quickly folded up his newspaper.

“Mr. Pilgrim, won’t you take a seat?” she asked, when he approached. She immediately poured him a cup of tea and passed it to him. “You’re quite right in that English coffee is perfectly vile.”

Once he had sat down, she tilted her head to one side and asked, “Forgive my asking, Mr. Pilgrim, but have you been to Savile Row?”

Cornelius B. Pilgrim beamed and ran a hand down his double-breasted waistcoat that buttoned fashionably high. “I have, actually, Your Highness.”

She looked him up and down. “I must say, you look quite the man about town. But we can’t give the tailor all the credit. Some gentlemen never achieve a cultivated look no matter how much money they throw at Mayfair. Why, I was only reading the other day that certain Americans have been wearing plum-coloured dress-suits with a lighter shade roll collar again, with the usual lack of success. It’s the third time they’ve attempted it in six years, apparently. You, however, Mr. Pilgrim, do the British tailor proud. Why, you look as though your family would take up several pages of
Burke’s Peerage
.”

Pooki raised her eyebrows.

His smile broadened. “Nice of you to say so,” he replied.

Mink leant towards him and lowered her voice. “You look so elegant, I almost mistook you for the Prince of Wales!”

The maid choked on her seed cake as the American turned pink with pleasure.

“I must say I was rather fond of that fur coat of yours,” the Princess continued. “Did you shoot that monkey yourself? There’s something about you that suggests you would be a good shot, Mr. Pilgrim. Those broad shoulders of yours, perhaps.”

Pooki scowled at her as she wiped her lips.

“Actually I didn’t,” he said, picking up his cup. “Despite what Lady Montfort Bebb thinks, guns aren’t really my thing.”

“I never doubted it for a moment. Why would you want Lady Montfort Bebb dead?” She paused before adding: “Or anyone else for that matter?”

Leaning towards her, he explained that he had sent her the note in order to test how serious she was about clearing her maid’s name. He had some crucial information, which he didn’t want falling into the wrong hands. “That’s why I said nothing when you asked me who I thought the culprit was when we were in the garden with the other ladies. One of them might be in on it.”

Mink asked why he hadn’t gone to the police.

“Having been interviewed by them over the incident with Lady Montfort Bebb, I’m not at all convinced they’re up to it.”

He then looked behind him to make sure that he wasn’t being overheard, and lowered his voice. “It was me who sent the anonymous letter to the coroner suggesting foul play,” he admitted. “I didn’t name the person who I thought responsible, as I didn’t have any proof. Then I got so frustrated at the inquest I decided to tell the coroner there and then, hoping he’d get to the bottom of it. But I didn’t get the chance. What I hadn’t foreseen, however, was that someone else entirely would become the focus of the investigation.” He glanced at Pooki, who raised her chin.

Mink leant towards him. “How clever of you to have discovered who the culprit is, Mr. Pilgrim. None of we English have a clue,” she said. “Who is it?”

“Thomas Trout,” the American whispered. “The week before the General was poisoned, he came twice to the apartments, which struck me as rather odd, given that he’s a gardener. Both times they argued so loudly I could hear them as I walked past the study. I couldn’t make out each word, but on the keeper’s second visit I heard him saying something about a lady’s name being ruined.”

“Whose?” asked Pooki.

They both looked at the servant, who immediately lowered her eyes.

“Whose?” Mink repeated.

“That’s the problem,” he replied. “I have no idea.”

The Princess poured them some more tea. “I very much appreciate your telling me, Mr. Pilgrim. You must be a very busy man, what with all the research you’re doing. Tell me, what do you think of the brontosaurus at the Natural History Museum?”

“Oh, it’s a wonderful specimen.”

The Princess looked at him. “That strikes me as rather curious, as there’s nothing of the sort there.”

The American smoothed down his moustache.

“Why would an eminent palaeontologist not bother going to see the country’s leading collection, yet make the effort to go all the way to see the dinosaur statues at the Crystal Palace when everyone now knows they’re not all anatomically correct? Even I know that the horn on the iguanodon’s nose is its thumb spike.” She paused. “Perhaps you don’t want to go to the police with your information because you’re not who you say you are.”

Cornelius B. Pilgrim slid his palms down his trousers.

“Who are you, Mr. Pilgrim?” she demanded.

Slowly he raised his eyes. He was indeed a palaeontologist, he said, or at least he had been. As a teenager he developed a fascination for natural history, and went on to study mineralogy and anatomy. Eventually he became a fossil hunter, and his findings added much to the world’s understanding of dinosaurs. He was most well known for his discovery of the kerasaurus, which he donated to London’s Natural History Museum.

It was years later that he realised the error that was to haunt him forever. While looking at a photograph he had taken of his prehistoric beast, which he had joyfully assembled, thinking of the wonders it would do for his career, he saw that he had mixed up two of its appendages. He stared aghast at its tail, surmounted by a head, protruding from its shoulders, and its neck extending from its rear end.

“I couldn’t believe what I’d done,” he said. For five nights he couldn’t sleep as he thought of all the people who had viewed it at the museum in South Kensington, and the damage it would do to his reputation if anyone found out. But that wasn’t the end of it. When he mustered the courage to look at the photograph again, it was then that he noticed the pinnacle of his folly.

“It suddenly occurred to me that the spiral horns I had attached to its skull were those of a goat which must have died nearby,” he said, his voice a whisper.

The realisation that he had mixed up the remains of a primeval
monster with those of a nineteenth-century ruminant was too much to bear. Turning his back on palaeontology, he burnt all his academic papers and returned every box of bones and fossils unopened to their curious senders. But soon he was gripped by a more insidious obsession. His mind still disturbed by the realisation of his error, he started dabbling in vegetarianism, seduced by the tantalising petals of an artichoke. Suddenly he renounced brisket and all hope of sanity was lost. It wasn’t long before he found himself drawn to the shady underworld of spiritualism. He grew a beard and started to socialise with mediums who smelt of violets, and clairvoyants who, despite their visions of the future, never knew he was coming.

His mother saved him from a life of cabbage and fictitious messages from the dead. Dropping in on an unexpected visit, she took one look at him and marched down to the kitchen. She found the cook on the verge of handing in her notice, claiming it wasn’t natural to work in a household that banned eating anything with a tail. The mother immediately sent for the butcher’s boy, and never had the kitchen seen such activity, as the cook made up for four barren months armed solely with a vegetable peeler. By the time the dinner gong sounded, the whole household knew what was to come, except for Cornelius B. Pilgrim. When his mother ladled out the Albert soup, made with young fowl, lean ham, oysters, and the hind leg of an ox, he immediately bolted for the dining room door, but found that it was locked from the other side. He looked at his mother through his uncut fringe and understood at once what he was up against. It was the aroma of the dish that broke him. He hung his head and wept for his topsy-turvy kerasaurus and the enthralled public who had queued to see it. He wept for his abandoned career that had so fulfilled him. And he wept for all the sausages he had steadfastly spurned.

Wiping away the tears that had run into his raggedy beard, he picked up his soupspoon and started to eat. It took a week for
his senses to be completely restored, and he forswore his monstrous whiskers. Venturing back into his study, the seat of his shame, he decided to put his scientific talents to good use again. He started to investigate the supernatural, revealing the tricks of the country’s greatest hoaxers and frauds. It was he who exposed the table-rapper Esmeralda Shufflecock, who for years had been stunning audiences not only with her talent but also her beauty, as most of her contemporaries ran to nineteen stone. One evening, as he watched her sitting at a table transmitting messages from the dead, he strode onto the stage and hauled up her skirts, much to the horror of the crowd. The gentlemen in the audience made much of covering their eyes, and when they peeped through their spread fingers saw to their dismay the knocking instrument irrefutably strapped to her shapely calf.

But Cornelius B. Pilgrim’s biggest triumph was revealing the true nature of Esmond Winterbottom, the celebrated prophet of spiritualism. Such were the man’s powers, he claimed he could summon the sleeping ghost of Shakespeare. Disguised with a false beard and spectacles, Cornelius B. Pilgrim obtained a seat at one of his séances and waited for the dead bard to appear. The lights were dimmed, and the slumped Mr. Winterbottom wasted no time in falling into a trance. Suddenly the sound of a harpsichord could be heard, though no instrument was present. A prostrate figure of poetic countenance rose from the ground and proceeded to drift out of the open window feet-first. It turned, continued for several yards, then came back in again through the adjacent window. After several revolutions, Cornelius B. Pilgrim rose from his chair, whipped the quill from the spectre’s grasp, and proceeded to tickle its seventeenth-century toes. The music was drowned by shrieks of mirth that gave way to uncontrolled hysteria. They were soon followed by a loud thud as the convulsed dramatist fell off his apparatus. The investigator then mounted the tracks, lay down, and proceeded to waft in and out of the windows boots-first while
reciting
Hamlet
. Esmond Winterbottom suddenly snapped out of his trance, and fled through the trap door in the floor. The last that was heard of him was that he had renounced America and was living in Peebles, Scotland, dressed in the tartan of a clan that never existed.

Cornelius B. Pilgrim became so well known as a result of his successes that his disguises failed to work, and he was turned away from séances before even reaching the parlour. So he changed tack and set himself up as a ghost hunter, specialising in haunted houses infested by strange knockings, chain-rattling, and impossible footsteps.

He took a sip of tea. “I came to Hampton Court Palace to investigate the new ghost sightings at the request of the General, who wanted to include them in his history of the palace,” he admitted. “He told me not to tell anyone the real reason why I was here, as not only would I need permission for an investigation, but I would come up against resistance from the residents who loathed any interest being taken in the spirits, as they made it difficult to retain domestic servants. I had been sitting in the dark in Fountain Court, waiting for an apparition, when I heard a strange sound and drew my gun, which was exactly the moment when Lady Montfort Bebb emerged from the push. I’m not sure who was more terrified, though I certainly came off worst,” he added, his fingers reaching for the bump on his head. “I’m surprised she left any of those poor Afghans standing.”

Insisting that he had an appointment, he then got up to leave and headed for the door. As Mink watched him, she was struck by the superior cut of his jacket. Why would a man so apparently intent on seeking justice for his dead friend go to the time and trouble of ordering a new suit? If he were simply taking advantage of being near London, home to some of the best tailors in the world, why didn’t he just put it in his trunk and wear it when he got home? Wasn’t it a little vulgar to be so concerned with his
appearance when his host had just died? As the ferryman heaved her back across the Thames, the breeze lifting the ruffles of her dress, the resounding answer came. Somewhere, in all of this, was a woman.

RETURNING TO THE PALACE
, the Princess ignored the hopeful look of the watercress seller, made her way to Clock Court, and headed up the stairs to the Silver Stick Gallery. A flushed cook with a bloodstained apron and a trail of flour across her forehead eventually opened the door. Glancing at the Princess’s turquoise earrings, she informed her that Lady Beatrice was not at home. She would be able to find her in the Flower Quarter, which was part of the Pond Gardens, and for the private use of the residents. “I’ve got to go, Your Highness,” she added. “There’s a joint of beef in the kitchen what needs seeing to. The sooner Her Ladyship gets a new parlour maid, the better. I’ve got more important things to do than answer the front door. And by the way, let me know when they arrest your maid-of-all-work. My niece is looking for a position.”