Read Online Skeleton-in-Waiting by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page A

Louise smiled at her and turned to Aunt Bea.
    â€œCan Carrie and I rustle up a cup of tea?” she said. “We’ve been listening to speeches about deserts.”
    â€œOh, no, my dear. I’m sure I can find everything. I’m still unpacking, bit by teeny bit, but of course I got the tea-pot out first. So essential.”
    â€œI’ll come and help,” said Carrie. “Four?”
    Mrs Walsh nodded, waited for Louise to sit, and lowered herself into one of Aunt Bea’s bungy chairs, where she settled erect, looking regally out of place, like a hawk Louise had seen in a palace in one of the Gulf States on a quilted satin perch.
    â€œHave you lived here long, Mrs Walsh?”
    â€œFor fifty years, Your Highness, since my husband retired as Junior Chamberer to His late Majesty.”
    Did Mrs Walsh have the trace of an accent? Granny’s had come and gone as she fancied. Fifty years—Great-grandfather had died in 1938.
    â€œHe didn’t stay on for my father?” said Louise.
    â€œHe was somewhat older than I am, and it seemed convenient to the Palace that the young King should have attendants nearer his own age.”
    â€œBut you must have known Granny,” said Louise. “That’ll give you something to talk to Aunt Bea about.”
    Mrs Walsh for the first time smiled, tight-lipped.
    â€œI fear not,” she said. “As Your Highness may be aware, your grandparents’ marriage was not welcomed in certain quarters, and communications between the two households were maintained on a merely formal basis. I had in fact met your grandmother once, in Petersburg, when we were both girls, but never in England.”
    The accent was still indeterminate, but in this slightly longer speech Louise could tell for certain, even before the reference to being a girl in St Petersburg, that Mrs Walsh had not been born English. Her precision of enunciation was like that of some of the German cousins, governess-taught, but the rhythms were slightly different from theirs.
    â€œAre you a Romanov too?” she said. “You look a bit like her.”
    Again Mrs Walsh smiled her thin smile, expressing not amusement but some error or misconception on Louise’s part.
    â€œI am a Belitzin,” she said. “It is true that my grandmother was acquainted with the Grand Duke Aleksei Aleksandrovich, whose reputation was such that slander could not be avoided. Had there been any truth in it, which there is not, your grandmother and I would have been second cousins.”
    Louise nodded. She was long used to the way in which people want to keep their cake of legitimacy and eat it in the shape of a royal connection.
    â€œBut family likenesses are extraordinary, aren’t they?” she said. “I was looking at my son in his cot the morning Granny died, and suddenly he looked just like her for a bit. I wonder if people with strong characters like Granny are more likely to be taken after. Do you have any children, Mrs Walsh?”
    â€œOne, Your Highness.”
    Not a welcome question, obviously.
    â€œHow did you come to England in the first place? During the revolution, I suppose.”
    Mrs Walsh did not exactly hesitate, but Louise sensed calculation in the brief pause.
    â€œDuring the revolution, yes. We were fleeing from the Bolsheviks like everyone else. Our major domo bought us places on a train—my mother, my three youngest brothers, two or three servants, all the valuables we could carry. At first we travelled in a little comfort in a proper carriage, though it was very crowded, but then that was commandeered by a general of one of the armies, fleeing like us, and we continued our journey in a cattle truck. Later still our truck was pushed into a siding to wait because an axle had caught fire. The others in the truck crammed themselves into the rest of the train, but my mother decided to wait for another train in the hope that she would know someone in