India Black and the Widow of Windsor (26 page)

The Queen and her guests had finished petting the ponies and we were all moseying toward the door, when there was a metallic screech overhead, followed by an ear-splitting creak as wood splintered. All eyes turned to the block and tackle overhead, which had tilted precariously to one side, where it teetered and held for a moment, then succumbed to the pull of gravity and tumbled through the opening. There was a bloody great commotion, as you can imagine, with the ladies shrieking and the gentleman dashing about, throwing themselves on the nearest feminine flesh and shoving the females out of the way of the plunging machinery. I made a grab for the marchioness and caught one wispy arm, yanking her from harm’s way and tossing her aside as though she’d been a rag doll. Then French bore down on me like a demented wrestler, wrapping me in his arms in a flying tackle that knocked the wind from me. We crashed into the side of a loose box, which collapsed under our weight, and tumbled into the hay.

“India, are you alright?”

My mouth was full of hay and my ribs had been crushed by French’s overzealous defense of my person. It was impossible to speak.

French seized my arms and shook me vigorously. “India, speak to me!”

I tried to draw breath, without success. My uncharacteristic silence spurred French to action. His brow furrowed with concern, he thumped me sharply between the shoulder blades. This had the effect of removing the hay from my mouth but left my lungs bereft of air. Consequently, I remained speechless. French squeezed me to his chest, his grey eyes boring into mine with an intensity I found both irritating and strangely touching.

There was an infernal hubbub going on, with some of the weaker sex wailing like banshees and several of the elderly gentlemen mumbling hysterically (especially the politicos, who were used to nothing more upsetting than weak tea in the afternoon), but I could hear one of the retired military types barking orders and chivvying the groomsmen and servants. As yet, no one seemed to notice that one of the nobility seemed preoccupied with a certain lady’s maid, but it was only a matter of time before one of the aristocratic harpies noticed French ministering tenderly to me, and then we’d both be in the soup.

I drew a strangled breath. “The Queen?”

At the sound of my voice, some of the intensity drained from French’s gaze. He reluctantly dragged his eyes from mine and gazed around. “She appears to be unscathed. It looks as though Brown pulled her aside.”

Wheezing like a Welsh pit pony, I struggled to sit upright.

“Here,” said French anxiously, “let me help you.”

I shook my head. “The marchioness?”

French issued a soft bark of laughter. “She’s wandering around the sight of the accident, telling the young ladies to pull themselves together.”

“I need to tend to her.”

French raised an eyebrow. “She looks more capable of tending to you at the moment.” He touched my ribs gingerly. “Does that hurt?”

“Ouch! Stop that, you damned heathen.”

“I believe you’ve cracked a rib.” French probed carefully.

I winced, inhaling sharply. “Stop poking me. I’ll be fine. And you need to get over there in the general melee and stop hovering over one of the servants.”

“You need medical attention.”

“I wouldn’t have, except some well-meaning oaf poleaxed me when I wasn’t expecting it.”

French scowled. “That’s the thanks I get for saving your life?”

I waved a hand, indicating our near surroundings. “I was twenty bloody feet from that block and tackle. There’s no way it could have hit me.”

French grunted. “Ungrateful wench. Rescue yourself next time.” He pushed himself to his feet.

I don’t know what possessed me. It must have been the effect of being flung about like a rat in a terrier’s jaws and being deprived of oxygen for such a long time that the part of my brain that rendered me incapable of being nice to French had been damaged, but I reached up and caught his sleeve.

“French,” I muttered, looking at his boots, “thank you.”

He took my hand and pulled me to my feet. There was a ghost of a smile on his face.

“My pleasure, India.” He trotted off in the direction of the Queen.

I tracked down the marchioness, who was haranguing one of the lesser nobility, Lady Somebody or Other, who was weeping copiously and trembling like a frightened doe.

“Come on, lass. Buck up. Show some of that English courage.”

The girl continued to sob. The marchioness sighed in exasperation and gnawed her lip with one of her yellowed stumps.

“Are you well, m’lady?” I asked.

Her rheumy eyes gleamed dully. “Bit of a hullabaloo there. I thought the old girl had pegged it for sure, but that bloody man seems to have pushed her out of the way just in time.”

“It doesn’t look as though anyone has been hurt,” I said.

“Not a scratch on any of us,” said the marchioness. She looked contemptuously at the sniveling girl. “Although ye’d think someone had been smashed to bits, by the way this young booby is carryin’ on.”

The marchioness rounded on me. “Where have ye been?” Her eyes narrowed. “Ye haven’t been with the prince, have ye?”

“Of course not,” I said, my dalliance with French in the loose box making me feel a bit guilty and, consequently, snappish. I mean, I know Bertie is a bounder of the first rank, but would he really use the opportunity afforded by his mother’s near-fatal accident to drag a maid off into the nearest stall for a bit of the rumpo? Doubtless the fellow had other things on his mind at the time, such as just how close he’d come to laying hands on the crown and getting out from under Her Highness’s thumb. The prince did look a bit disappointed, I thought, stroking his beard regretfully while John Brown petted his mama and the guests milled about.

The marchioness slipped her arm through mine. “I need a cup of tea, Irene. Take me back to the house. I wonder if this will delay luncheon?” she mused as we wound our way through the splintered timbers and around the block and tackle, now smashed to bits on the stable floor. We had nearly reached the door when the young lady the marchioness had been chiding issued a scream that would have made the witches of
Macbeth
envious. I whirled round in time to see Vincent stagger out of one of the stalls, his face pinched and white, his hand to the back of his head. French ran to meet him, and the little fellow made it as far as French’s arms before he collapsed. French cupped Vincent’s head tenderly, frowned, then examined his palm. Even from where I stood, I could see that it was covered with blood.

"C
ourse,” Vincent said through a mouthful of cake,’C“ ’twasn’t about to tell anyone wot really’appened to me. I figured it ’twas better just to say I’d fallen out o’ the loft and let ’em think I was a hidiot, than say I’d been bashed on the ’ead and halert the hassassins.”

“Except that presumably the assassins are already on the alert, given that someone felt compelled to put a dent in your skull.” I helped myself to some of the cake before it all disappeared down Vincent’s gullet.

French, Vincent and I had repaired to the stone cottage before tea, the frightening accident in the stables having sent the Queen and her guests off to their rooms with cold compresses for a collective lie-down. The Queen had managed to choke down enough luncheon for a family of four before submitting to her attendants’ demands that she retire to her room and rest. I know, for I was there, seeing that the marchioness didn’t inhale anything she shouldn’t. My employer did me proud, however, forging with abandon through the courses but otherwise behaving herself. After luncheon, I put her down for a nap and escaped to the hut.

“Tell us again how it happened,” said French.

“I was followin’ Archie, just like you told me,” Vincent obliged. “’E went ’round the corner of the stables and I ’urried after ’im, peekin’ round to see where ’e’d got to. I saw ’im climbin’ up a ladder to the loft. ’E went inside and I clumb up after ’im.” He found a stray raisin on the table and put it daintily into his mouth. “When I got up there, Archie ’ad disappeared. I snuck round the place for a while but couldn’t see nobody. Then I ’eard voices and right then, I ’eard a noise over by the block and tackle. I crept over there, quiet as a mouse, but there was no one about. I was lookin’ down at the Queen through that there openin’, and the next thing I know, I’m wakin’ up in one of the stalls, my ’ead poundin’ like I’d been drinkin’ that swill Ned Palmer at the Helephant and Castle calls gin.”

Vincent’s wound had been cleaned and bandaged by Doctor Jenner, and he’d changed out of his bloody coat into a clean one. He looked rather cheerful, considering he’d been tomahawked and thrown into a stall down one of the shafts used to toss fodder to the horses.

French was turning a bun in his hands, staring absently at the wall. “It could be coincidence.”

“First the poisoned cocoa, and now the accident with the block and tackle?” I snorted. “I think it unlikely under the circumstances.”

“
If
the chocolate was poisoned,” interjected Vincent. “Wot’s ole Robshaw got to say about that?”

“Nothing yet. The tests at the laboratory aren’t complete.”

“Wish that bloomin’ cove would get a move on,” Vincent grumbled. “Wot’s ’e waitin’ on, anyway?”

French shrugged, shredding the bun into tiny pieces, which he dropped onto the table. “Suppose the incidents did not occur by happenstance. Does that strike anyone as odd?”

I hate it when French plays the bloody schoolmaster, as though we were all back at Eton, studying the classics. I thought for a bit. There was something unusual about the episodes involving the Queen.

“Neither seems to have been a serious attempt to kill her,” I said. “If you planned to poison someone, wouldn’t you make sure there was enough of the stuff in the drink to do the job? And as for the block and tackle, well, it made enough noise to wake the dead when it fell over. Even someone as immobile as the Queen would have plenty of time to get out of the way. If the nationalists do have someone in the castle, why haven’t they done as they’ve threatened and carked Her Highness by now?”

“Yeah,” agreed Vincent. “’Ow come the hassassin ain’t shot ’er or stabbed ‘er? ’Ow come ’e’s pussyfootin’ about?”

“Good question, Vincent. The nationalists made it clear they intended to kill the Queen,” said French. “We’ve assumed that meant a very public act, one in which the assassin himself might die, as a means of making a political statement.”

“Instead, the attacks on Her Highness have been the kind in which the killer remains anonymous. Obviously, he wants to remain alive and undetected.” I ate some cake and ruminated over a few things. “If these really were attempts on her life, the perpetrators are bloody clumsy, or the deeds weren’t meant to be taken seriously.”

“The nationalists’ idea of macabre fun? Frighten Her Highness to death instead of killing her outright? If that’s the idea, it hasn’t been successful.” French gathered his crumbs from the table and wadded them in his handkerchief for disposal. “The Queen refuses to countenance the ‘absurd notion,’ as she describes it, that anyone is trying to assassinate her here at Balmoral. She has complete trust in her servants and guests. Dizzy is about to pull out his hair. He’s begged Her Highness to return to London, but she says to do so would contravene dear Albert’s wish, and she refuses to go.”

“So we have two incidents, which might be accidents or warning shots across the bow or actual attempts on the Queen’s life. Which do you think it is, French?”

“The block an’ tackle fallin’ ’tweren’t no haccident,” said Vincent, “not with me gettin’ clobbered on the noggin like that.”

I had to admit he had a point. “So we eliminate the idea that the Queen has had a run of bad luck lately. Is the Marischal trying to put the wind up Her Highness’s sails?” I adopted my best Scottish brogue: “Here we are, Your Majesty. We can come for you anytime we want, so we’re having a bit of fun, watching you and your advisors squirm about like insects in a jar.”

“Except,” said French, “as I have already pointed out, she’s not squirming.”

“Dizzy is. And I’ll bet Robshaw’s not sleeping well at night. Have you spoken to him?”

“I see him every day, and I spoke to him after the affair in the stables this morning. He believes they were genuine attempts on the Queen’s life. But it’s his job to protect her, and hence you would expect the man to treat these occurrences as authentic.”

“We were told the Marischal was intelligent and forceful, and the Sons of Arbroath were a dangerous organization,” I said. “Is Robshaw’s intelligence wrong? Are we dealing with a group of bumbling clowns?”

“You may be correct, India,” said French, which shocked me so much I choked on a bite of cake.

Vincent shot to his feet, overturning his chair, and gave me a thump on the back. “Ya want to watch them raisins. You can swaller one down the wrong ’ole and kill yourself.”

I thanked him for his concern. Between French’s exuberant rescue in the stable and Vincent’s boisterous heroics just now, I was not going to be fighting fit in the morning. My ribs ached, and my spine felt as though Thor had been playing the scales on it.

Assured that I would live, French resumed his professorial air. “I believe you were right when you said the killer wants to commit the deed and escape, er, scot-free, as the saying goes. There would be tremendous publicity value in killing the Queen and evading capture. Just think of the effect on government officials and politicians. They’d be terrified that they might be the next victims. The Sons of Arbroath could create a climate of fear that sweeps the land, and engender contempt for the government for failing to catch the Queen’s killer.”

Vincent nodded sagely, as if he discussed the effect of political assassinations on public opinion on a regular basis. “That ole Marischal would be pleased as punch if ’e could stir up people like that. ’E’d be a legend.”