The New Countess (31 page)

And so they will be. He will lose two years of his life in prison on a manslaughter charge – and the prison will not be too uncomfortable – but will receive £5,000 in return for forgetting a few seconds of his life; a few seconds in which he handed the gun to the King. I do not think the King himself remembers those seconds; the pain in his knee was too acute, and the shock of such an event tends to block out memory. He is not a young man. And Mrs Keppel, fortunately for the nation, has chosen not to remember.

I was able to assure Mrs Keppel that the loader – Alan Barker, one of the gamekeepers, and engaged to Elsie the head parlourmaid at Dilberne Court – would be looked after. It was as well that both parties were so closely associated with the family: servants might bicker and gossip amongst themselves but, when it came to it, were fiercely loyal to their families. Alan would not argue, and Elsie would not encourage him to do so; they would get married and live happily ever after. Mrs Keppel was tact itself. I could not, of course, give her details, but she understood what I was saying; and I was amused by the implicit threat. If we didn’t look after Alan Barker her story might have to change. She is a wonderful woman. Almost as wonderful as Isobel.

Her Ladyship behaved with such dignity and composure when the body was brought back it made an impression on me I cannot forget. The King returned in the Daimler together with the daughter Lady Rosina, Mrs Keppel and myself. The parrot, now back on Lady Rosina’s shoulder, quite spoiled the solemnity of the occasion. It pecked away at its mistress’s bloodstained jacket – a severed jugular creates quite a mess – and the poor girl seemed too distraught to shake the bird off or somehow distract its inquisitive beak. I could have wrung its neck.

The body was brought in and laid in the drawing room which Isobel had made so pretty, bright and light, and, under my instructions, so secure. Metal windows can be properly locked, ancient latticed ones, however attractive, cannot be made safe.

‘How did it happen?’ Isobel asked. She was in a daze. I quickly explained.

‘I would have gladly given my life for him,’ His Majesty said. ‘A dear good man. A friend: they are so rare. Man proposes, God disposes. I have known so many die in my time. I will leave you to your grief, my dear Isobel. It will be hard to bear, I know only too well.’ It was both eloquent and moving and Isobel, still dazed, nodded her appreciation of this tribute from the King.

‘Too right, mate. Too right,’ squawked the parrot, and for some reason on this occasion it seemed more like a tribute from the world of the beasts than any kind of offence. They were offering their sympathy.

My first concern of course was the welfare of His Majesty: I escorted him and Mrs Keppel back to his room. My priority now was to get him home to Sandringham and his normal security team. The grounds there at least are efficiently patrolled. There had been rumours in Dilberne that a disgruntled employee – the former Gatehouse keeper and one suspected of republican sympathies – had been seen scuttling about the woods in the past weeks, armed with a shotgun. He might well have been a poacher going about his normal business, but down at the Dilberne Arms the poaching fraternity swore he was none of theirs. We could take no chances: a resentful person is vulnerable to anarchist propaganda; reasonable protest can quickly turn to violence; an armed conspiracy could have been afoot. It was something of a relief to have His Majesty safely indoors once again, though the circumstances were deplorable.

I found her Ladyship looking down on the quiet, pale body of her lifeless husband. She ran her finger over the skin of his cheek. She made a picture I do not forget; graceful and slender in a lilac tea gown. It is engraved in my heart. Still her Ladyship did not cry. She swayed a little and I had to steady her. I will not say she leaned on me but I felt she needed my presence. It is true that through the past weeks I have been a great support to her. Then Lady Rosina emerged from her stunned state, noisily, like her parrot, and fell theatrically upon the body.

‘Oh Mama, at least I was there,’ sobbed Lady Rosina. ‘It was an accident. I saw him die. It was so quick. Quicker than when poor Frank died. There was nothing I could do.’

I had quite forgotten that Lady Rosina too was a widow. Such was the company she kept it was easy to forget. Nor did she wear a wedding ring. Isobel was not the kind who would remove her ring: if she married again she would remove it perhaps to another finger. I would of course keep the matter of the Brazilian girl from her Ladyship, and indeed the nature of her daughter’s relationships: what the eyes don’t see the heart will not grieve over.

My masters had come to the conclusion that the household at No. 3 Fleet Street was not after all a cause for concern: the parties there were too involved with their personal situations to have much time for political conspiracy. Suspicions had been roused by the collaboration of Ford Madox Hueffer, of German origin, and Joseph Conrad, a Pole, both of them using
The Modern Idler
as a mouthpiece. Conrad’s essay ‘Autocracy and War’ had caused particular concern, but turned out to have been rejected by Mr Robin in favour of a piece of the Pole’s rather gloomy fiction. I myself thought his essay was fairly perceptive and perhaps prophetic, but a nation has to keep its intellectuals under control. Mr Brown turns out to have protectors in high places: in a perfect world the Honourable Anthony Robin and his friend would be thrown in prison but thank God it is not a perfect world. In my opinion people must find their happiness where best they can.

By now other members of the shooting party were drifting back to the house, on foot, by carriage or cart. Those who had set out so bravely that morning returned so miserably that afternoon! All were stricken; the staff silent and dutiful. Most guests went to their rooms, others grouped in the great hall under the giant chandelier and stood around talking in hushed voices. Mr Neville, red-eyed, served brandy. I had had the chandelier’s rusty iron chains replaced with steel – at least there was no danger of further fatalities, as there had been when I first went to Dilberne Court. His Lordship had complained that the reddish-black of the old slender chains was more attractive than the shiny, solid steel of the sturdy new ones, but soon came round to my point of view. Safety must come before aesthetics. His Lordship was a reasonable man and will be sorely missed.

‘Too right, mate!’ barked the parrot into a room already disturbed by Lady Rosina’s sobs. Isobel’s grief emerged as anger.

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Rosina,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear myself think. Do go and get out of those horrible clothes and into something not so blood sodden. Just throw them away. Burn them. Let Lily choose for once. She has good taste. And get that evil bird out of my sight. I will not have it in this house again.’

Lady Rosina composed herself, I must say with some dignity, straightening her body and dashing away her tears. Women of breeding, even Rosina, command my great respect.

‘Mother,’ she said, ‘this is not your house. It is now my brother’s, and Minnie’s. Minnie quite likes Pappagallo.’

Her Ladyship stared at her daughter, her face impassive. But in my mind’s eye I saw a whole row of dominos falling, each one as it fell knocking its fellow over, inexorably, until all were down. The Ladies Desborough and Ripon came into the room to surround her Ladyship in a flurry of sympathy, concern and the pastel shades of the most expensive tea gowns imaginable. Their tweedy husbands followed to hum and haw. I went back to my room to organize the King’s departure to Sandringham and check on Alan Barker’s incarceration, and left them to it.

So far as the new Countess, Minnie, is concerned it occurs to me that her suspicions of her husband’s infidelities are unfounded: equally that the new Earl’s rejection of his wife is unreasonable: she is to be pitied and forgiven rather than condemned. Thank God the divorce is only talked about, not enacted. They could yet come together. Anthony Robin, who will no doubt go on spreading trouble like the green bay tree, rejecting what is good in favour of what is bad as in Mr Conrad’s essay, is the villain of the piece; his sister Diana, so loved by Lady Rosina, is just an amiable idiot.

I, the Inspector, knowing what I do, find myself in a position of considerable power. But if I brought about a reunion, which is as I can see within my competence, husband, wife and two children would be reunited as God intended, and be as likely to live happily ever after as anyone else. They might even have daughters to carry on the blood line of beautiful and gracious women.

But what then will happen to her Ladyship, to Isobel? If I leave well alone, she will continue flitting between Belgrave Square and Dilberne Court, discarding this and choosing that, for the rest of her days. She might marry again: she is young enough and lovely enough. Though not, I fear, particularly rich: their mine at the Modder Kloof is not doing quite so well: the refurbishing of Dilberne Court has drained even deep pockets dry. Lloyd George is gaining power: he will probably be made President of the Board of Trade; his lot will end up taxing the landowning classes until they whimper. But she will cope, with her usual astuteness.

If I speak up, Minnie will be the new Countess. She will have Belgrave Square and Dilberne Court under her care; she will do what she wants with them. She will throw out the bamboo furniture and reinstate the old carved oak monstrosities: let Arthur turn the estate into one big racing track for his Jehus – which to my mind will never amount to much: he is far too indecisive. Unlike Mr Austin who makes up his mind and sticks with it: I have seen him in action. She will convert the billiard room into an artist’s studio with proper north light. She may even disagree with him about sending the children to Eton. Arthur will argue back but Minnie could well win. They love each other, and they love their children: Master Edgar, whom Arthur brought into the world with his own bare (if oily) hands: sturdy freckled Master Connor: little lions, little lambs.

If I speak up, Isobel, as the Dowager Countess, will be relegated to the Dower House.

It is falling down; bats cluster inside it; swallows nest in the attics. Cesspits will have to be replaced with septic tanks. It has no proper heating, no electric lighting. But her Ladyship will enjoy that: something else to achieve, to improve, to make good. She might even come to terms with Minnie: they got on well in the beginning, and they might well again.

If I speak up, Isobel, widowed, may recreate the home of her childhood, simpler and happier, the laughing, loving demi-monde from which her husband snatched her, putting behind her a grandeur with which she was never wholly happy, but always made the best of, as is her nature. Alice, Ettie and Constance can come and stay and gossip about fashion, art, scandal and who’s who in politics to their hearts’ content, on holiday from their braying, sporting husbands. When Isobel is old, Minnie the young Countess will come down to the Dower House with her two strapping sons and bring her good soup and chicken pie, and perhaps a dainty shawl made of finest spun Angora wool from Liberty to put around her shoulders. And I might well be there as her husband, to grow old with her. Isobel has always needed someone to look after her and keep her safe.

I might well speak up.

Facing the Future

3rd and 4th January 1906, Westminster Abbey and Dilberne Church

The funeral service was held at Westminster Abbey as befitted the late Earl’s rank and status. The interment was to be the next day, at the family vault at Dilberne, opened, swept and warmed for the occasion. One last task for the widowed Countess, Isobel. Hundreds attended the sombre Westminster ceremony. All were in black. Only the occasional diamond gleamed to relieve the gloom, the only other jewellery was jet. The deceased Earl, Robert, had been a great favourite, even tipped, so it seemed, to be a future prime minister, so meteoric had been his rise. Only a few short years from Fisheries to the Colonial Office to the Cabinet. Now this.

Mr Balfour was there to pay his respects, as was Mr Campbell-Bannerman, and rather to Isobel’s horror, David Lloyd George. Arthur the new Earl was there of course, and his sister – without her parrot: she had at least that sensitivity – but the absence of Melinda, the young Countess, was noted. She had been prevented by illness from travelling back from the United States.

All the former Earl’s sporting friends, amongst them Desborough, Ripon and Keppel, turned up to pay their respects. There was a sprinkling of gambling friends and racing enthusiasts, someone who looked suspiciously like a bookmaker, and various political friends and allies. Robert had been a man of many parts, as the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who gave the funeral oration, recalled. His Majesty, alas, could not be present: the trouble with his knee had flared up.

Also there, weeping noisily and disturbing the congregation, was a rather torrid-looking dark beauty in a quite unsuitable red hat, who attempted to throw herself upon the coffin and had to be moved by the ever-vigilant Inspector Strachan. Fortunately the girl had been sitting at the back of the church, and the family, seated as they were in the front pews, did not see the incident.

It was a much humbler party who turned up for the entombment in the family vault a day later. Such servants who could be spared from the running of the house and the preparation of the wake attended, and there was much weeping and lamentation. The coffin was closed not open, which disappointed some. As it was carried into the vault by six bearers, one of them the new Earl, Strachan saw two women and a child draw near. One he recognized as the new Countess, Melinda, charming if pale and wrapped in Russian black sable – not even her mother-in-law had a fur so grand. The other was the woman he had seen disembark so quickly from the
Carpania
at Liverpool on that shameful day, leaving her passport behind. Grace. She was in a sensible black rabbit fur, and had Master Connor on her hand. The little boy was also wearing fur. Nanny would never have stood for it: ‘Nasty germy stuff – Lord knows what’s lurking in there!’