The Curious Incident at Claridge's Read online

  ‘Voyeuristic practices are frowned upon at Claridge’s,’ Payne said sternly. ‘Does the honour of the regiment mean so little to you?’

  ‘Something funny’s going on, Payne. See that couple over there?’ Jesty pointed. ‘The old boy and the girlie?’

  ‘What about them? You couldn’t possibly be after him, so you must be after her.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. Any objections?’

  ‘Are you stalking her?’

  ‘She did something rather peculiar. I’m trying to work out what she’s up to exactly …’

  The young woman had a delicate pale face. Hair pulled back in a severe bun. Late twenties or early thirties, Payne decided. Attractive. Practically no make-up. Simple black dress. Intense. Beautiful, yes, in a rather exclusive kind of way. Her bone structure! A model? Something of the head girl about her—the way she did her hair. Made her appear a trifle forbidding. Shouldn’t do her hair like that. The old boy was probably in his seventies. Face like a lugubrious bloodhound. Querulous expression. Balding. Smart double-breasted blazer and black tie … Her grandfather?

  There was a coffee pot on the table in front of them with two cups. Also a glass. No food of any kind. Had they been to a funeral? Or were they going to one? A somewhat desolate air hung about them.

  ‘Who are they?’ Payne whispered.

  ‘Her name is Penelope, that’s how the pantaloon addressed her. No idea how they are related. My guess is he is her aged uncle.’

  ‘May be her aged husband …’

  ‘Perish the thought! Don’t think she likes him very much.’ Jesty’s eyes narrowed. ‘She’s a looker, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is, rather. Now, steady on—’

  ‘You think I am after her virtue?’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I want to stroke her hair … Look at those lips … She’s the kind that puts up a fight … I’d like that … Incidentally, the pantaloon is going to a place called Maybrick Manor.’

  ‘Maybrick Manor?’

  ‘Some such name. May have been Maypole Manor. Or Mayflower. Not sure. The acoustics here are awful. Intend to complain to the manager about it.’

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that perhaps Claridge’s was never meant to accommodate eavesdroppers?’

  ‘The old boy said something about it not being his fault the ghastly woman wanted to end it all.’

  ‘What ghastly woman?’

  ‘No idea … I managed to walk close by their table twice—after I saw what she did. I was curious. Don’t think she noticed me. Didn’t so much as lift her pretty head. Distraite.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  Jesty pointed. ‘See that little box beside the old boy’s cup?’

  ‘What about it?’

  The next moment the young woman signalled to one of the waiters and said in a peremptory voice that was loud enough for them to hear, ‘Could we have the bill, please?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Looks like a snuff-box.’ Payne squinted. ‘A silver snuffbox. Seventeenth-century, at a guess.’

  The old man spoke peevishly. ‘Penelope, my dear, isn’t it a bit early?’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘I don’t think you should make the Master wait. It would be bad manners.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded some more coffee, actually. There’s no need to hurry. The Master said, come whenever you want.’

  ‘The Master was only being polite.’

  ‘The Master is always polite.’

  Payne frowned. ‘Who is the Master?’

  ‘A damned fine-looking filly,’ Jesty murmured. ‘I love her voice. I love her throat—’

  ‘She looks jolly tense. Like a cat on hot bricks.’ Payne stroked his jaw with his forefinger.

  ‘She’s got a reason to be tense. She did something damned odd.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  Jesty did not answer. They watched the old man pick up the snuff-box and put it into his pocket.

  ‘What’s inside the box?’ Payne persisted. ‘Not snuff?’

  ‘Not snuff. It contains a pill, Payne. A capsule, rather. A single capsule. All right. She—’

  ‘Would you be kind enough to order a cab, please?’ The tall young woman called Penelope was addressing the waiter again. ‘We are rather in a hurry.’

  ‘We are not, really,’ the old man said.

  ‘Name of Tradescant—’ She broke off.

  ‘Take cover,’ Payne whispered. ‘She’s looking our way.’

  Drawing back sharply, Jesty said, ‘She saw us. Hell and damnation. Let’s get out of here.’ He pulled Payne by the cuff and the two men beat a rapid retreat in the direction of the private dining room. Awfully undignified, Payne thought. Like schoolboys caught in the act.

  ‘She blushed … Deep crimson … She looked a picture of guilt,’ Payne said thoughtfully. ‘Penelope Tradescant. It’s the kind of name one remembers.’

  ‘Tradescant may be only the old boy’s name,’ Jesty pointed out.

  ‘Is there any reason for her to look guilty? Come on, what did you see? That capsule you mentioned, tell me about it.’

  Jesty gave him a sidelong glance. ‘Always hunting after a mystery, aren’t you, Payne? So it’s true what they say about you being a regular Sherlock?’

  ‘Hate it when people use clichés. One should always strive to be original. Why don’t you say something like—’

  ‘Ah, there you are, boys, you’ve decided to rejoin our so—so foolish and trifling banquet.’ Major-General Hailsham greeted them with this unlikely quotation from Romeo and Juliet. ‘We’ve been wondering what happened to you. Where did you disappear? What have you been up to?

  You look as though you’ve surprised a nymph while bathin’! What? What?’

  ‘… and then old Wavell asked me if his eye was straight,’ Colonel Speke was saying. ‘It was only then I realized he had a glass eye. Gave me a frightful turn.’

  ‘Some Napoleon brandy, boys?’ Brigadier Fielding, his face the hue of a tropical sunset, held up a bottle.

  ‘What did she do?’ Payne asked again.

  Jesty looked at him. ‘She swapped the capsules.’

  3

  Poison in Jest

  ‘Well, I deduced he had poison on his mind some time before he told me the whole story,’ Major Payne said in a pleased manner. ‘He thought the house was called Maybrick Manor. Would be damned unusual if a poisoning did take place at a Maybrick Manor, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘You believe that was a Freudian slip—an association of ideas? How interesting,’ Antonia said. ‘Was he really thinking of Mrs Maybrick? Did you ask him?’

  It was three hours later and they were in their sitting room in Hampstead. Payne had perched on his wife’s desk. He was still wearing his uniform and was twirling an unsmoked cigar between his fingers.

  ‘I did ask him. He said I was probably right. He’d been reading about the case in Famous Trials only a couple of days ago, at your old haunt, the Military Club library, of all places. He picked up the book at random. Said he’d actually wondered what it would be like to make love to a poisoner. And now he’s fallen for a girl he believes is a poisoner! As though the devil made it happen, he said. Incidentally, what was the name of the new librarian lady? I keep forgetting.’

  ‘Mrs Mole—a very nice woman. Something Mrs Maybrick was most definitely not,’ Antonia said. ‘Mrs Maybrick was accused of poisoning her husband with arsenic.’

  ‘Quite a cause célèbre in its day, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. So. Captain Jesty was after the girl. He saw her earlier on in the foyer, fancied her wildly and soon after went in hot pursuit?’

  ‘That’s the precise sequence of events. Jesty prides himself on being extremely adept in the art of seduction. Got quite a reputation in that department, actually. Life is dull and painful, so why not take one’s pleasure where one can?

  That seems to sum up his philosophy. He is quite incapable of resisting the urge to lunge. He ask
ed if I thought it was one of those self-destructive compulsions and I said yes. It made him laugh. Well, he saw the girl’s aged consort produce a little silver box, take out a capsule and swallow it with a glass of water.’

  ‘Any idea what the capsule might have contained?’

  ‘Some anti-dyspeptic remedy, Jesty imagines, but it could have been anything. The elixir of life—a painkiller—royal jelly—an anti-depressant—Viagra. People take all sorts of pills nowadays. Look at poor misguided Michael Jackson. The old boy then rose and started hobbling towards the loo. A second later Penelope did the substitution. She “pounced” on the box. As though her life depended on it, Jesty said. The old boy had left the box on the table. She opened it and took out the remaining capsule—’

  ‘How could Captain Jesty be so sure there was only one capsule inside the box? It wasn’t as though he was peeping over her shoulder, was it? He was some distance away, behind a potted palm.’

  ‘He knew because, as luck would have it, Penelope dropped the little box in her nervousness and it fell on the floor. Nothing fell out of it. It was empty. Jesty is certain it was empty. Penelope picked up the box, then opened her bag, pushed the capsule inside, produced another capsule out of her purse and put it inside the box. She then replaced the box on the table where the old boy had left it and leant back in her chair. It all happened very fast. At first Jesty imagined it was some kind of a practical joke. He is fond of practical jokes himself, apparently. At one time, he said, he enjoyed nothing better than spiking fellows’ drinks and substituting laxatives for painkillers.’

  ‘Not exactly what one would expect from an officer and a gentleman.’

  ‘No. Well, Jesty is the cad type. Actually I wonder if he is a bounder? He does wear the right kind of signet ring on the right finger, but such details can be easily aped.’

  ‘What exactly was the difference? Cads betray their class—they break the gentlemanly code of behaviour—while bounders are the outsiders?’

  ‘Perfectly correct. Bounders manage to assume the veneer of the real thing—’

  ‘But they keep misbehaving and giving themselves away?’

  ‘Perfectly correct. Now then, if the old boy—the “pantaloon”, as Jesty kept calling him—was not to notice anything untoward and become suspicious, the replacement capsule must have looked the same as the rest of the capsules he’d been taking. You agree? Which of course would suggest careful premeditation on the girl’s part.’

  There was a pause, then Antonia wondered aloud why Captain Jesty was so convinced that the capsule contained poison.

  ‘He didn’t think the girl looked the practical joker type. Too serious, too intense. Something in that. Well, she seemed terrified when she realized we had been watching her. She flushed a deep crimson.’

  ‘You thought she looked guilty?’

  ‘I did. Yes.’ Payne loosened his collar with his forefinger. ‘And now I keep thinking of the fatal capsule gliding down the old boy’s gullet. Chances are that he will take it tonight, or has already taken it. Oh never shall sun that morrow see. As you can see, my love, my imagination is as bad as yours. You wouldn’t set a poisoning case at a house called Maybrick Manor, would you?’

  ‘A name with such a sinister resonance wouldn’t be terribly subtle.’

  ‘Emblematic names are a bore. Suggests the author has no trust in the reader’s intelligence.’ Payne clipped the end of the cigar and produced a box of matches. ‘Never cared much for Restoration comedies, myself. Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t find Lady Wishfort or Lady Booby in the least comical. Old Dickens was as bad. He had a real weakness for that kind of satirical flag-posting. Mr Murdstone—Do-the-boys Hall. Then we have Evelyn Waugh and Miles Malpractice. Not terribly subtle, you are perfectly right. That sort of thing is all right in children’s books. I am sure Mr Nasty and Mr Nice keep toddlers chuckling in an amused enough manner.’

  ‘Something that sounds like Maybrick Manor,’ said Antonia thoughtfully. ‘What could it be? Mayhem Manor? No—that’s worse. Were they both going to Maybrick Manor?’

  ‘Only the old boy, or that was the impression Jesty got. “Tradescant” was the name the girl gave to the waiter when she ordered the cab. It would be interesting to know how exactly they are related, if at all. Oh, we also heard her refer to a “master”—she said it wouldn’t do to keep the master waiting, words to that effect.’

  ‘A master?’

  ‘Could be a master of hounds. Or a master of a college. Or perhaps some sinister religious order is behind it all?’ Payne held up his cigar. ‘We may discover that the old boy is a sacrificial victim. He is meant to collapse and expire at the feet of a mysterious masked figure known as “the Master” … Penelope and the Master are of course acting in cahoots …’

  ‘What if Captain Jesty lied to you? His story of the capsule swap might have been a fabrication.’

  ‘Some kind of malicious joke, you mean? Jesty’s … jest?’

  ‘He may have decided to live up to his name … Is he good-looking?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Merely curious. Cads are usually good-looking.’

  ‘He is not in the least good-looking. He’s got round eyes, brown hair and a silly little moustache. He looks annoyingly smug. Well, he seemed familiar with my penchant for puzzles, so a prank is possible, I suppose—though that wouldn’t explain Penelope’s guilty expression.’

  ‘Didn’t you discuss the incident with any other of your brother officers?’

  ‘No, of course not. Awful old buffers. They regard the Duke of Edinburgh as a cross between Maynard Keynes, Professor Moriarty and the Messiah. I don’t know why I go to these reunions, I really don’t. I always feel a little depressed when I come home.’

  ‘You didn’t engage in a single meaningful discussion with anyone?’

  ‘I am afraid not. There are more meaningful discussions taking place in the graveyard at midnight than at any regimental dinner I have ever attended.’ He rose. ‘I’m going to see if I could persuade Google to locate Maybrick Manor for me, or any similar-sounding houses. I also intend to look up “Tradescant”. It is a singular enough name. There can’t be that many. Wasn’t there a gardening family called Tradescant? There was also a Tradescant baronetcy, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Hugh! Do change, please!’ Antontia called out after him.

  ‘You can’t sit in front of the computer in your regimental uniform.’

  4

  The House of the Lurking Death

  ‘I may last another twenty years, Master,’ Sir Seymour Tradescant was saying. ‘Or even twenty-five, if I take care. I am not in bad health. Nothing really wrong with me. Heart, liver, blood pressure, all perfectly tickety-boo. If I strike you as a bit off-colour at the moment, it’s because of this damned abscess thing, so tiresome. My big toe, would you believe it. Thought it was gout at first, that’s why I didn’t have my toe seen to sooner. I let it fester. That’s how my fool of a doctor put it.’

  ‘Medical men are not what they used to be,’ the Master said with a sigh. ‘My dentist is Chinese. He treats my teeth as though they were Hong Kong.’

  ‘The abscess was caused by an ingrown nail. Perfectly idiotic, but I might have lost my toe, apparently. At my age it could have been fatal,’ Sir Seymour went on. ‘One more day and they might not have been able to save it—they would have had to amputate it or something. Terribly gruesome, I know. Reminds one of the worst excesses of the French revolution. Penelope was not particularly sympathetic, I am afraid.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Not at all sympathetic. She insisted it was my own fault. Said I needed to have a pedicure regularly. Hinted that my washing habits weren’t up to scratch. Implied that I was mean—that I was saving on soap and hot water. That hurt me. I can’t tell you how that hurt me, Master. Pedicures cost the earth, apparently, if one gets the top people to do them.’

  Sir Seymo
ur stared ruefully at his left foot. Beside him, propped against the leather armchair, was his ivory-topped cane. Since his arrival he had changed into a plum-coloured smoking jacket, black tie and black velvet shoes with his monogram stitched on the toes in gold braid. The Master, as was his invariable custom, wore a black dinner jacket. Both looked like figures from a bygone age. Dinner over, they were sitting in the Master’s study.

  ‘I couldn’t wear a shoe on that foot till yesterday, things were so bad,’ Sir Seymour continued. ‘Feared I might end up in a wheelchair. Ghastly swelling.’

  ‘But you have recovered now?’

  ‘The swelling’s gone down. My foot is back to its natural colour, whatever that is. I am no longer in pain, just the tiniest twinge every now and then. I am taking the last of the antibiotics tonight, thank God. It’s been every six hours without fail for the past week. Hate the damned stuff. It seems to disagree with me. I have been getting these awful tummy aches—odd rashes. I get depressed too.’ Sir Seymour’s lugubrious pale eyes fixed on the bronze inkstand on the Master’s desk. ‘That may have nothing to do with the antibiotics, mind.’

  The Master asked if Sir Seymour was sure he wouldn’t like a nightcap.

  ‘Would have loved nothing better, my dear fellow, but I am not allowed alcohol, not while I’m still taking antibiotics. I may get a reaction, apparently. May balloon and choke to death, or so my doctor tells me. They always exaggerate, these fellows. Terrible quacks. I worry too much, that’s the trouble. I wake up in the middle of the night and I have rather grotesque thoughts apropos of nothing in particular. No prospects except pain and penury on this side of the grave. That sort of idea. At one time, I decided Penelope was plotting to kill me. I keep falling into spells of sudden and morbid anxiety.’

  ‘The Tradescants are long-lived.’

  ‘Awfully long-lived, almost indecently so, you may say.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying so,’ the Master said primly.

  ‘My great-grandfather lived to be a hundred and two. A biblical age, almost. An uncle of mine is still going strong at ninety-seven. Keeps writing letters to The Times. Terribly depressing.’