Read Online The Dorset House Affair by Norman Russell - Free Book Online

was nearly half past ten, and he was due off watch at eleven. Yes, he’d do that, but there’d be no harm done if he were to take a look beyond that closed door. He took the key down from its hook, turned the lock, and stepped out into Cowper’s Lane.
    The cool night air was a refreshing contrast to the overheated atmosphere of Dorset House. The lane was crowded with departing guests, making their way to a line of cabs stretching away into the darkness along the garden wall. The air rang with the excited buzz of conversations heightened by the strength of Field Marshal Claygate’s champagne. Some cab drivers were busy settling their clients into the vehicles, while others stood in knots against the opposite wall of the lane, smoking and chatting. It was altogether a dramatic contrast to the quiet little lane dozing in the sun that Box had first encountered on the Tuesday past.
    ‘Why, if it ain’t Mr Box,’ said a cheerful voice, and Box turned to see Tom Fallon the groom standing at the entrance to the Dorset House stables, where lamps glowed in the yard. ‘How are you, sir? Did they give you any champagne?’
    ‘They did, Tom,’ said Box, ‘and also some smoked salmon sandwiches, all of which I consumed in a kind of cubby-holeunder the back stairs by the kitchens. Quite a hive of activity here in the lane, tonight, isn’t it?’
    ‘It is. What you see back here, Mr Box, are the guests who come by cab. They book a hansom for eleven, and traipse down here along the carriage drive from the front of the house when old Sir John calls time. Of course, the carriage folk are met in Dorset Gardens by their own coachmen, as you’d expect. But a lot of these people…. Well, they’re all fastened up tight in boiled shirts and evening suits, but they’re not what we’d call Quality. Government clerks, and people like that, most of them.’
    ‘But they are invited guests, aren’t they?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Tom Fallon, and Box saw him smile. ‘They’re guests all right – most of them. But they’re invited in batches, if you know what I mean. The field marshal has deep purposes of his own in inviting a lot of these folk, as is well known, but they’re not the kind that he’d normally want to get their knees under his dining-table.’
    Box laughed, and the friendly ostler followed suit.
    ‘What a snob you are, Tom Fallon!’ said Box. ‘Mind you, I’m beginning to see what you mean. Those two men over there, now, look as though they’re supporting each other in case they both fall down. Dear me! One of them’s started to sing—’
    ‘That’s what I mean, Mr Box. They’ve drunk too much of the master’s champagne. They can behave themselves well enough while they’re in the house, but once they get out into the air, the fumes mount to their heads and they behave like that. See – their cabbie’s taken charge of them, and bundled them both into his cab.’
    As Tom was talking, another groom joined them from the yard. He was a young, sharp-featured lad of not much more than twenty.
    ‘Are you telling this gent about our back-lane guests, Tom?’ he said. ‘There were three of them came staggering along the lane half an hour ago, two of them in full rig, with top hats and greatcoats ,and the third just in an evening suit. They were all laughing and singing, and the one in the middle looked as though he was dead to the world. Just fancy, they’d just come out of the house by the back door. They’d have been thrown out of any decent pub if they’d been in that state.’
    ‘What do you mean by that, my friend?’ asked Box, suddenly alert. ‘What do you mean by “came out by the back door”? Didn’t these three drunks come down the carriage drive at the side of the house, like everyone else?’
    ‘Well, guvnor, they may have done. But I fancied they’d stepped out into the lane from the garden passage, because I think I saw a shaft of light fall across the steps for a moment, and then disappear