The Dorset House Affair Read online

  She laughed, and making a Herculean attempt to mask her revulsion, she placed a hand gently on his arm.

  ‘Dear Maurice,’ she said, ‘don’t be so silly! When we parted, I wished to leave you quite free to form other attachments without being plagued by a ghost from the past. Of course I don’t mind, as you put it. Although I’ve never met Julia Maltravers, I’m sure she’ll make you an excellent wife.’

  ‘I don’t want you to feel let down, Beth, that’s all. A fellow at the club the other night took me to task about it, and I’ve remembered what he said. You see, I may have given you the impression that you and I – that we would perhaps marry one day. Maybe we would have done, but then Julia—’

  ‘But then Julia came along, and swept you off your feet! Do go away, Maurice, and stop being morbid! Go back to your friends. We both made foolish mistakes. Our intimacy was not all your fault.’

  She saw him relax in relief. He gave a carefree laugh, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Bless you, Elizabeth,’ he said, and walked lightly from the gallery.

  Elizabeth de Bellefort sat down at a table in the centre of the gallery, and listened to the noise of revelry from the great chamber beyond. How happy everybody seemed! Would they feel so elated when that night’s grim work was done?

  Earlier in the evening, she had stood in the sitting-room of her private suite on the first floor of the great mansion, watching her brother as he had opened the top drawer of a dressing-table. He had withdrawn a bulky object wrapped in a silk head scarf, which he had carefully removed, revealing to view the heavy Webley Mk II .455 revolver, which he had given to her in Normandy.

  ‘You understand that there are six rounds in the cylinder?’ he had asked her. ‘You must fire just one shot, and then throw the pistol down. The cartridge will remain in the cylinder until someone breaks open the breech. You see the thumb catch? It is essential that it remains in the “off” position’ – he had made a swift movement with his thumb – ‘as it is now. When the deed is done, throw the gun down, and leave the passage immediately. It is an act of private vengeance. No one in this house must know what you have done.’

  Elizabeth de Bellefort had picked up a capacious reticule from the dressing-table, and carefully placed the pistol inside it.

  De Bellefort had pointed to a table in the centre of the room, where two full liqueur glasses stood beside an open bottle. She had known that the glasses contained Calvados, the apple liqueur of their native Normandy. Together, they had drunk a solemn toast to their future success. Since then, she had felt a curious drowsiness, a sense of detachment from reality. The music of the orchestra had sounded warped and muted, and she seemed to float rather than walk….

  When Maurice had told her, over a year ago, that her services as a lover were no longer required, she had behaved with the kind of impeccable dignity expected of a French noblewoman. She and her brother had returned to the Manoir de Saint-Louis. In the fullness of time, she had learned that she was pregnant, and had confessed as much to her brother.

  Alain had been a tower of strength, and had taken full command of the situation. The English family, including the scapegrace Maurice, would be told nothing of her plight. No one must know that she had conceived a child out of wedlock. When her time drew near, Elizabeth had been taken to a remote hospice run by the Visitation Sisters, and there she had been delivered of a stillborn child.

  The sisters had done their duty, but their unspoken contempt for her as a fallen woman had been only too palpable. Or had she imagined that?

  A severe brainstorm had followed this devastating experience, and she had been confined for a time to the insane asylum of Bon Sauveur at Caen. When she had recovered, her brother had urged her to seek vengeance on the man who had brought her to the verge of madness, and she had solemnly agreed to do so. Family honour was very precious to both of them.

  ‘You don’t mind about Julia, do you?’ Maurice had asked her. No; she did not mind about Julia. Because whoever she was, and whatever her particular fascinations, she would never become the wife of Maurice Claygate.

  It seemed that by one consent all hundred guests had congregated on the long rear terrace of Dorset House to watch the firework display that would conclude the evening’s festivities. Flaring torches had been placed at intervals on the flags, and on some of the garden paths, so that Box could dimly make out the long covered passage on the far right of the garden, the door of which Tom Fallon had opened for him during his visit to Dorset House earlier in the week.

  As the stable clock struck ten, a massive barrage of explosions signalled the start of the display. A breathtaking spectacle of many-coloured exploding stars erupted across the night sky, temporarily lighting up the whole of the grounds. The audience cheered, and as the spectacle in the sky died away, there came a loud hissing and spluttering from somewhere in the dark beyond the lawn, and a great set piece burst into silver and crimson fire. The words ‘Happy Birthday, Maurice Claygate’ were suddenly illuminated by a flanking display of Catherine wheels, and everybody clapped. Box recalled his own excited visits to Sydenham as a boy, to witness the Guy Fawkes displays.

  The air on the terrace was now permeated by the smell of gunpowder. An explosive show of Roman candles had begun, shooting their brilliant coloured balls of light high into the sky. Field Marshal and Lady Claygate were standing in admiration a few yards to Box’s left. They had been joined by their elder son, Major Edwin Claygate, and his wife. Of the pock-marked Monsieur de Bellefort and his sister there was no sign.

  Box moved away through the crowd, and found himself near to Maurice Claygate, who was talking animatedly to a group of friends, all of whom had clearly drunk more than was good for them. There was a good deal of loud laughter, but the general noise level of the party had risen so high that the laughter was not especially noticed.

  ‘You’re a good fellow, Brasher, to take it so well,’ Maurice was saying. ‘I was dashed rude on Saturday – or was it Sunday? – and you’d have been quite within your rights to pummel my head. But it’s all been squared now, you know. I’ve—’

  Maurice stopped as a man in the scarlet livery of a footman approached him, bearing a folded piece of paper on a tray.

  ‘Hello,’ said Maurice, ‘what do you want? You’re new here, aren’t you? A note? Well, let me see what it says.’ The footman presented the note, and disappeared in the throng. Hello, thought Box, glancing after the retreating figure, I think I know you, my friend. Now what are you doing here tonight?

  Box brought his gaze back to Maurice Claygate, and watched him as he read the note. He saw him raise his eyebrows in surprise, and then give a little amused smile.

  ‘Sorry, you fellows,’ he said. ‘A little assignation is on the cards. I’ll be back in time for the closing speech, I expect, and then perhaps we could all slope off to the Cockade Club?’

  The others murmured their enthusiastic agreement to this plan, and in a moment Maurice Claygate was lost to sight in the crowd.

  Another fireworks tableau, set up further down the garden, suddenly burst into life with a shattering roar, revealing the royal monogram VRI made from brilliantly coloured fiery fountains. When the patriotic tableau had died down to a glow, Field Marshal Claygate and his wife began to turn away. Evidently, the display was coming to an end.

  But it was not quite over. A grand finale of bangers and flashers set up an exhilarating din, and almost immediately a whole battery of coloured rockets shrieked their way upwards, bathing the whole garden in a lurid glow. Then there came a single bang! from somewhere near the garden passage, followed immediately by a reverberating echo. If I were an imaginative man, thought Box, I’d say that that was a shot – a revolver shot, to be exact. But, of course, it could only have been another firework. He had always been astonished at the quite deafening racket set up by fireworks.

  The crowd of guests had started to drift back from the terrace, talking animatedly of the evening’s entertainment. Box threaded his way through the throng of guests returning to the grand saloon for a final toast to Maurice Claygate before dispersing to their carriages.

  Suddenly, a dramatic commotion erupted from somewhere beyond the saloon. Men’s voices were raised, and there came the chilling sound of a woman’s hysterical scream, high and plaintive. This, thought Box, was no time to observe social etiquette. He shouldered his way through the crowd of startled guests and came into a circular vestibule, where three passages met.

  A beautiful blonde young woman, pale-faced and trembling, stood with her back to a door in the wall, her arms spread out as though to prevent anyone seeking access. She was wearing a green dress of watered silk, and the light of the candle sconces in the vestibule reflected the many brilliant facets of her diamond necklace. Box had glimpsed her more than once in the evening’s assembly, but did not know who she was.

  ‘I’m a police officer,’ said Box without preamble. ‘Who are you, miss? And what’s the matter? You’re trembling. Did you hear a shot?’

  The young woman looked at him with a kind of frozen fear that unnerved him. Her eyes held an expression of desperate panic.

  ‘A shot?’ the young woman stammered. ‘No. Why should I? It was a firework. I am Mademoiselle de Bellefort, a guest here in Sir John Claygate’s house.’ Even while she was speaking, her arms remained outstretched, guarding the door in the wall behind her. ‘What do you want?’ she continued. ‘There’s nothing there, I tell you. The garden passage – it is empty. Why should it – why…. Leave me alone!’

  She’ll faint in a minute if I keep questioning her, thought Box. And there’s a strange, unfocused look about her eyes…. Is she drugged? He made to move Elizabeth de Bellefort gently aside, but she suddenly screamed with what sounded like unbearable anguish, and
pressed herself with even greater determination against the door.

  ‘Alain! Alain!’ she screamed, but her brother was nowhere in sight. The vestibule was now crowded with anxious guests, and people were relaying the dramatic scene to others out of sight and earshot. Then Major Edwin Claygate, Maurice’s elder brother, suddenly appeared, and on seeing him the frantic young woman uttered a final shriek and collapsed in a dead faint.

  What if that loud report, and its confirming echo, had, after all, been the noise of a pistol shot coming from the garden passage, which that young woman had been so desperate to guard? What had she to conceal? What had she done?

  In a moment the Dorset House people would take care of that unfortunate young lady, and a doctor would be sent for. There was other work for him to do.

  Box threw open the door leading into the garden passage.

  4

  Murder in Mind

  The passage was empty. No corpse lay there, shot through the heart by a bullet from a revolver. No discarded weapon had been flung away by a decamping murderer. The murmur of conversation and the occasional peal of laughter came to his ear from the few guests who had chosen to linger in the garden.

  What could have made that frantic young woman so determined to bar his entry to the garden passage? What danger – or terror – had she imagined would be lurking there?

  The narrow, brick-walled passage extended some thirty feet from the vestibule door to the exit into Cowper’s Lane. It was lit by a line of flaring gas-jets spaced along the right-hand wall, their flames shaking and trembling in the breeze blowing through the row of open windows opposite them. The place was filled with the acrid reek of gunpowder.

  The passage was as he remembered it, paved with terracotta tiles, which had been partly covered in coir matting. Particles of dry shale had been scattered here and there, perhaps from one of the garden paths, but there were no bloodstains, no marks of a dead man having been dragged by his heels towards the far door into the lane. Halfway along the passage, the cupboards and chairs that he had seen when Tom Fallon had opened the door for him, formed a little island in the empty expanse of tiled floor.

  Box walked slowly along the passage, listening to his boots echoing on the tiles. The gaslights dipped and hissed in the draught from the windows. The door to his left at the bottom of the passage, which gave access to the rear gardens of Dorset House, was closed, but not locked. The door into Cowper’s Lane was locked, and the key to the lock was hanging on a screw fixed to the right-hand door post.

  Box looked round him, and uttered a sigh of vexation. He must resist the temptation to look for clues to a fantasy situation conjured up by his own professional leanings. There was nothing in this passage to suggest any kind of foul play.

  Perhaps that young lady had had too much champagne? Even ladies of quality were known to get tipsy occasionally. Should he slip away, unobtrusively, and leave the family and their guests to their own preoccupations? It 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-hole under 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. But I could have been mistaken. Who are you, anyway, mister?’

  ‘This is the famous Inspector Box of Scotland Yard, Joe,’ said Tom Fallon. ‘He’s here to see fair play up at the house, so you keep a civil tongue in your head, do you hear? Well, it looks as though the lane’s clearing, now, and we can close the yard gates. Nice to have met you, Mr Box. Perhaps we’ll meet again, some time.’

  ‘Good night, Tom,’ said Box. ‘And by the way, young Joe, your three tipsy gents couldn’t have come out of the garden passage, because it was locked from the inside. I know, because I unlocked it just now to step out here. Well, I’d better be on my way. My overtime runs out at eleven.’

  ‘Money for old rope,’ laughed Tom Fallon. He and the lad called Joe turned back under the stable arch, and Arnold Box went back into the house.

  Box found that the grand saloon was almost deserted, as most of the guests were assembled in the entrance hall or on the steps of the great Corinthian portico, waiting for their carriages to be driven up to the door. People were talking in low tones about the incident in the vestibule.

  ‘I’m not in the least surprised,’ one elderly lady was saying to another. ‘I happen to know something about Elizabeth de Bellefort. A friend of Lady Claygate told me about it in confidence. She’s French, of course,’ the lady continued, ‘but from a very good family, I’m told. Oh, there’s my husband at last! I thought I’d lost him.’