The Pigeon Pie Mystery (7 page)

“Perhaps we could play when you return,” Mink suggested.

“I should be delighted. You must join the palace’s Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. I’m the Secretary. I shall return in a month and we’ll arrange a game of doubles. If you should require anything in the meantime, please ask one of my servants.” She then knocked on the roof. As the chairman resumed his ungainly trot, Mrs. Bagshot turned back and raised her voice. “I hope you’ve learnt to live with your loss. It’s really all we can do.”

Passing the resident gas lamplighter, a hare poached from Bushy Park in his pocket, they entered Fountain Court. The square garden was surrounded by a cloistered walkway with numerous doors, each bearing a brass nameplate and a bell. Hanging in the gloomy stairwells were baskets used by residents on the upper floors to winch up their provisions. “Glad I don’t live here. The noise from that fountain would send my waterworks funny,” muttered Mrs. Boots, their footsteps echoing on the cold flagstones. “And there’s nothing Dr. Henderson likes better than peering at the contents of a chamber pot. Me, I’d rather he didn’t take quite an interest. It’s no wonder some round here call him the Piss Doctor.”

Mink glanced at the darkened corners. “Have you ever seen a ghost?” she asked brightly.

The housekeeper stopped again, leant towards the Princess, and lowered her voice. “I’ve seen none myself, but they’re here all right. The residents don’t like talking about the spirits, as they make it difficult to keep servants. Eight have just walked out and two more are threatening to go after seeing two new ghosts that spooked them rotten. Horrible moaning. I’d ask you not to talk too liberally about them spectral sightings, if you don’t mind. The Society for Psychical Research keeps asking if it can carry out an investigation. They’re gentlemen all right, but I wouldn’t want them roaming around the palace at night with all that science in their heads.”

She suddenly bolted, and the Princess and the maid ran to catch her up again, the two delivery boys lagging behind with their load. “I’ve worked here for over thirty years, and while I hadn’t seen a ghost, I’ve seen pretty much everything else,” she called over her shoulder. “And if I haven’t seen it, then my mother certainly did, having been a maid at the palace all her life. You’d be amazed by what the residents try and get away with, and it’s me who has to sort it out.” By now Mrs. Boots’s cage was well and truly rattled, and out flew her grievances like escaping birds. The most tiresome aspect of her duties was her additional role as Keeper of the
Chapel Royal, she moaned. “The ladies are very particular about where they sit, which causes no end of rows. But I won’t be having any problems with you. You’ll be one of those …” She stopped, her eyes flicking briefly to Pooki for inspiration. “What do you call them?” she asked.

“I’m a Christian, Mrs. Boots,” Mink replied. “I shall certainly be attending divine service on Sunday, as will my maid.”

Nothing of the housekeeper’s previous speed matched the sprint that followed, and they came out onto the East Front, where the enormous yews first planted by William and Mary loomed up in the darkness. Turning left along the outside of the palace, the woman scurried past the royal tennis court, the Princess catching the odd phrase, including “dust the Royal Pew,” “the residents will be the death of me,” “Dr. Henderson,” and “piss pot again.”

Eventually they reached the Wilderness, an overgrown shrubbery with large elms and criss-crossing pathways. “Keep up so I don’t lose you,” warned the housekeeper as she entered. “It’s dark in here, but I know my way.” Mink and Pooki quickened their step, the servant clutching the back of her mistress’s skirt as they crept through. Eventually they reached the other side and the housekeeper stopped at a door in a wall that led to a private back garden.

The Princess and the maid peered through the darkness at the large, flat-fronted house looming beyond it. Built around 1700, it offered not an ounce of cheer. The housekeeper followed their gaze. “This is Wilderness House. Yours on account of Mrs. Campbell having just died. Don’t ask me about the circumstances. Turns me queer. I haven’t eaten brussels sprouts since. Usually there’s squabbling amongst the residents when one of them dies. If the deceased’s apartments are better than theirs, they fire off letters to the Lord Chamberlain asking to swap long before the body’s cold. But Mrs. Campbell has been in the ground for almost three weeks and not a whisper.”

She patted herself as she searched for the keys. “This is the
back way in. The front door is on Hampton Court Road, but we can’t get to it from the palace, as all the gates are locked by now, given your late arrival.” She continued clutching at her pockets. “There’s no gas. A couple of years ago the residents petitioned for it, but it was thought too dangerous, what with the fires we’ve had. And electricity is too costly. There’s no good complaining. When Michael Faraday lived in a grace-and-favour house overlooking Hampton Court Green, a few doors up from Dr. Henderson’s practice, he didn’t have any electricity either, despite his discoveries in the field. And don’t bother looking for the bathroom. There isn’t one. Mrs. Campbell wouldn’t pay for one to be installed. She’ll have to lug the water up,” she said, nodding to Pooki, who immediately frowned. “Hard to believe that Henry VIII had hot and cold running water when he lived here.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Campbell didn’t have the means,” suggested Mink.

“Didn’t have the means, or didn’t want to spend the money?” the housekeeper asked. “The biggest misconception about this place is that the residents are destitute, despite William IV having called it the quality poorhouse.” Residents needed a certain amount of money to afford to live at the palace, she continued. Not only were they obliged to cover the maintenance of their homes and any alterations, but they had to pay for heating, lighting, insurance, as well as an extra supply of water at a constant high pressure in case of another fire. “Some of the ladies end up having to give up their apartments, as they can’t afford to live here anymore,” she added.

The Princess fell silent.

“You look a little surprised, Your Highness. All the payments and obligations are set out in the warrant that was sent to you.”

Mink hesitated. “I’m a little behind in my letter-opening, Mrs. Boots. I did, however, receive your note about all pets being prohibited apart from lap dogs, so we’re fine on that score.”

“Glad to hear it. If it were me, I’d ban the lap dogs too. It’s enough having to put up with that pile of manure at Trophy Gate, without having to dodge all the deposits they leave around the place.”

Pooki pointed to the high hedging that ran alongside the house. “What is that?” she asked, speaking for the first time.

“It’s the maze,” Mrs. Boots replied, handing Mink the keys. “The keeper’s just been given an official warning. Someone was stuck in there for two days last week. Apparently he was still walking in circles when they finally escorted him out.”

CHAPTER III
The Ominous Arrival of the Undertaker

OLLOWING
a night of intoxicating dreams, Dr. Henderson looked at his unruly curls in the mirror and decided that it was finally time to master the plastered look, all the rage in New York. Bending over the china washbowl, he slowly poured a jug of water over his head, the coldness banishing the stubborn remains of slumber. After rubbing his hair with a towel, he carefully parted and combed it, and, with a quick glance at the diagrams in his gentleman’s magazine, swathed his head with linen bands. He fetched his cleaned boots from outside the door, carefully closed it again, and pressed inside them two pieces of India rubber he had cut into a pair of soles. Hitching his white nightshirt up to his knees, he then proceeded to tread around the room, listening for the indignity of creaks.

The general practitioner was so consumed by his impolite footwear that he failed to hear the uneven gait of his housekeeper coming down the landing. Mrs. Nettleship was dressed in the black uniform of mourning, despite the years that had passed since her husband sunk silently to the bottom of the North Sea. Her rust-coloured hair, as coarse as a horse brush, stuck out from
underneath her white widow’s cap. With hands as large and red as a butcher’s, she opened the door with unrestrained determination, forgetting, as usual, to knock. She stood staring, her mouth open, as she took in the doctor’s wet curls taped to his head, his nightwear drawn up to his knees, and his bare legs sticking out of his boots. Once she had recovered her senses, she quickly pulled the door shut, having instantly recognised a gentleman maddened by love.

But there was no escaping the woman. “Dr. ’enderson,” she called, her lips against the crack. “There’s people what’s waiting houtside the front door. I told them you don’t start until nine hon a Saturday, and that no doctor can cure without heggs hin ’is stomach. But they say they’ll catch their deaths in the rain. Tom Saddleback says ’e doesn’t want to be seen by hanyone, neither. Says ’is nose his pointing the wrong way. North-heast hinstead hof south-west, happarently.”

The doctor parted the curtains and looked down to see the palace gardener holding his nose, and suspected he had been brawling in the King’s Arms again with one of the monument’s warders. “Show them in, Mrs. Nettleship, I’ll be right down,” he called. “I would be grateful if you would get out the nose machine. It’s the small wooden clamp that you mistook for part of my bicycle last week. It should be in the bottom drawer of my desk, though I think I spotted it in the dining room where the cigar cutter should be. And my eggs, Mrs. Nettleship. Please remember that I prefer them scrambled. With cream.”

He started hunting for a clean collar, which could have been anywhere, given her penchant for secreting his possessions in arbitrary places. Seldom a week went by without the doctor fantasising about replacing Mrs. Nettleship. But he could never go through with it, as the widow, who insisted on being called his housekeeper despite being a maid-of-all-work, had five children to feed. And then there was the odd occasion when she managed
to find the correct ingredients for a ginger cake, and all resentment would vanish as the smell of it baking drifted under the door of the waiting room and sharpened even the dullest of appetites.

Mrs. Nettleship had come with the practice overlooking Hampton Court Green, a handsome house next to the former home of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect commissioned by William and Mary to rebuild their main apartments in the palace. Dr. Henderson had bought it the previous year with no knowledge of its perilous financial state, as by then its owner had thrown himself into the Thames, weighted down like a sack of unwanted kittens. With its close proximity to the palace and its well-connected residents, he had assumed the business would be sufficiently profitable. Aware that an overworked doctor could reach his grave sooner than his coughing patients, at first he insisted on keeping to the hours stipulated on the brass plaque he mounted outside the front door, with the exception of emergencies. But it soon became apparent that he needed all the business he could get. For the grace-and-favour residents treated his bills with the same indifference as those from their milliners. Not only did they assume they could put his services on account, but they refused to attend the practice, unwilling to share a waiting room bench with the unfragrant poor or the ill-bred soldiers. Some of his afternoons were therefore spent on home consultations that not only incurred an extra fee but involved patients who were more difficult to treat, as the higher classes were prone to exaggerate their symptoms. However, the aristocrats, who could afford to pay, wouldn’t, and the poor, who wanted to pay, couldn’t. And he found himself at night trying to balance the books, the gas turned pitifully low to save some pennies, with only his jar of leeches for company.