Read Online Death and the Princess by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Barnard
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gave every appearance of waiting impatiently for the last feeble spark to be extinguished.
In this sort of environment the Princess flowered, like an outrageous orchid in a herbaceous border. She smiled, she flashed those splendid eyes, she bent solicitously over and chatted, and she made the staff feel they were a cross between Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, fit only for translation to a heavenly home, or for CBEs at the very least. I began to appreciate her, not as a person, but as a performer: on duty she was a non-stop, never-flag show. At length we all tottered into the dining-room for drinks and lunch. The old people, we gathered, would be partaking of a ‘light lunch’ (cabbage-stalks and potatopeelings, most probably) elsewhere in the building.
The array of local worthies we were lumbered with was a mixed bunch. There were lots of the sort of red-faced, paunchy businessmen we’d met at the Wellington, whose rubicund, heavy-lidded aspect told of business lunches, and wage negotiations into the early hours. Then there were the Midlands gentry, consciously giving the event tone. They self-consciously left the Princess to the commercial interest — rather implying that they could talk to her any day of the week. I was given a drink to hold (I suspect on the direction of the lady-in-waiting, who had decided that I could not be treated like any old policeman), and I tried to mingle while not letting my guard down. I found myself talking — my eye on the Princess all the time — to someone who seemed to be a nob of some kind.
The conversation turned out to be an elegant variation on the lady-in-waiting’s family obsession: we played the ‘I suppose you know’ game.
‘I hear you’re one of the Northumberland Trethowans. Everyone survive that nasty business last year?’
‘Everyone except my father,’ I said. ‘Mostly they thrived on it.’
‘Harpenden’s close to the Yorkshire border, isn’t it? I suppose you know the Witteringhams?’
‘I think I may have — ’
‘And the Northumberland Fortescues. Not the Derbyshire lot, but the younger branch. Now, they wouldn’t be all that far from you, would they?’
‘No, about twenty — ’
‘I say,’ he interrupted, with a sort of nervous intensity that covered the rudeness, ‘wasn’t your mother one of the Cumberland Godriches? You know, I think we must be related. I say, Dot — wasn’t my Aunt Margaret second cousin or something to the Cumberland Godriches?’
‘Yes, through her maternal grandmother,’ drawled Lady Dorothy.
I was surprised to hear Lady Dorothy addressed as Dot, but not surprised to hear she had everyone’s family tree at the tips of her well-manicured fingers. The conversation pissed me off no end, but after a bit I got him on to horses and dogs, which I suspected were the only other things he knew anything about, and eventually we sat down to lunch. Lunch was one of those predictable disasters which occur when cooking staff used to making boiled fish and cottage pie try to do something a little special. After it, farewells were said, little speeches made, and the Princess was driven off to the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, where she was staying overnight. Later in the day she was to attend Beckett at the Birmingham Rep, but seniority goes for nothing if you can’t hand that sort of job over to the lower ranks, so I delivered the Princess, like a gorgeous parcel, into the safe-keeping of Joplin, commandeered a car from the Birmingham CID (who had been informed of my mission and had promised all co-operation) and about four o’clock hit the road for Knightley.
Knightley, it turned out, was a charming little village of about four or five hundred inhabitants: not one of the Shropshire showplaces, not an obvious venue for Housman fanciers bent on tracing the course of the celebrated Lad from plough-shaft to gallows, but still a very pleasant little place indeed. I could see no obvious reason why Bill
In this sort of environment the Princess flowered, like an outrageous orchid in a herbaceous border. She smiled, she flashed those splendid eyes, she bent solicitously over and chatted, and she made the staff feel they were a cross between Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, fit only for translation to a heavenly home, or for CBEs at the very least. I began to appreciate her, not as a person, but as a performer: on duty she was a non-stop, never-flag show. At length we all tottered into the dining-room for drinks and lunch. The old people, we gathered, would be partaking of a ‘light lunch’ (cabbage-stalks and potatopeelings, most probably) elsewhere in the building.
The array of local worthies we were lumbered with was a mixed bunch. There were lots of the sort of red-faced, paunchy businessmen we’d met at the Wellington, whose rubicund, heavy-lidded aspect told of business lunches, and wage negotiations into the early hours. Then there were the Midlands gentry, consciously giving the event tone. They self-consciously left the Princess to the commercial interest — rather implying that they could talk to her any day of the week. I was given a drink to hold (I suspect on the direction of the lady-in-waiting, who had decided that I could not be treated like any old policeman), and I tried to mingle while not letting my guard down. I found myself talking — my eye on the Princess all the time — to someone who seemed to be a nob of some kind.
The conversation turned out to be an elegant variation on the lady-in-waiting’s family obsession: we played the ‘I suppose you know’ game.
‘I hear you’re one of the Northumberland Trethowans. Everyone survive that nasty business last year?’
‘Everyone except my father,’ I said. ‘Mostly they thrived on it.’
‘Harpenden’s close to the Yorkshire border, isn’t it? I suppose you know the Witteringhams?’
‘I think I may have — ’
‘And the Northumberland Fortescues. Not the Derbyshire lot, but the younger branch. Now, they wouldn’t be all that far from you, would they?’
‘No, about twenty — ’
‘I say,’ he interrupted, with a sort of nervous intensity that covered the rudeness, ‘wasn’t your mother one of the Cumberland Godriches? You know, I think we must be related. I say, Dot — wasn’t my Aunt Margaret second cousin or something to the Cumberland Godriches?’
‘Yes, through her maternal grandmother,’ drawled Lady Dorothy.
I was surprised to hear Lady Dorothy addressed as Dot, but not surprised to hear she had everyone’s family tree at the tips of her well-manicured fingers. The conversation pissed me off no end, but after a bit I got him on to horses and dogs, which I suspected were the only other things he knew anything about, and eventually we sat down to lunch. Lunch was one of those predictable disasters which occur when cooking staff used to making boiled fish and cottage pie try to do something a little special. After it, farewells were said, little speeches made, and the Princess was driven off to the home of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, where she was staying overnight. Later in the day she was to attend Beckett at the Birmingham Rep, but seniority goes for nothing if you can’t hand that sort of job over to the lower ranks, so I delivered the Princess, like a gorgeous parcel, into the safe-keeping of Joplin, commandeered a car from the Birmingham CID (who had been informed of my mission and had promised all co-operation) and about four o’clock hit the road for Knightley.
Knightley, it turned out, was a charming little village of about four or five hundred inhabitants: not one of the Shropshire showplaces, not an obvious venue for Housman fanciers bent on tracing the course of the celebrated Lad from plough-shaft to gallows, but still a very pleasant little place indeed. I could see no obvious reason why Bill
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