Gentlemen Formerly Dressed Page 3

  Rowland nodded.

  “Avoid mentioning those friends of yours,” Wilfred went on. “Pierrepont’s a Tory… he has no time for socialist sentimentality and he’ll have no time for the crowd you insist on moving with. It will, quite understandably, cause him to distrust you. Do not mention that you think you’re some kind of artist.”

  “Very well,” Rowland said tersely.

  Wilfred glanced at him. “Pierrepont cares very little about what happens to German Communists so don’t go bleating about how they’re being badly treated. He won’t give a toss. Your best hope is to demonstrate that the Nazis are not restricting their attacks to the leftist rabble… to show him what could happen to one of us.”

  Rowland’s eyes darkened.

  Wilfred stopped. “Rowly, if you are to have any slim hope of achieving anything, convincing anyone, you must curb your temper. This, dear brother, is the politics of diplomacy. Despite appearances, it is not necessarily a team sport.”

  Rowland rubbed his hand through his dark hair. He exhaled. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Rowly…”

  “Really… I’ll be charming…”

  “See that you are.” Wilfred rapped his knuckles on the door to Pierrepont’s suite.

  There was no answer.

  Checking his pocket watch, Wilfred knocked again.

  This seemed to prompt a response. The female voice was noticeably agitated. “No… No… don’t come in… Oh, my God! My God!”

  Both Sinclairs hesitated.

  “Are you sure this is the right suite?” Rowland asked.

  “I called on him here yesterday,” Wilfred replied.

  “Could he be…?”

  Wilfred shook his head, disgusted. “Quite possibly.” He turned to go.

  But there was something about the woman’s voice. Rowland tapped again.

  “Madam, are you all right?” he called through the door.

  Sobbing. Hysterical screaming wails.

  Immediately Rowland tried the handle and, finding the door unlocked, pushed it open.

  The sitting room seemed undisturbed. There was a crystal tumbler, half-filled with brandy, perched on the plush arm of a club seat and the secretaire was open, but otherwise the room was ordered and neat.

  Rowland glanced at his brother. Wilfred gathered himself grimly, and they followed the wailing through to the adjoining bedroom.

  Barely through the doorway, they faltered.

  “Bloody hell!” Rowland murmured.

  They stared speechless. A man lay on the bed. Rowland could tell it was a man only because the frilled nightdress was pulled up above his waist to reveal those parts of him that were unmistakably male. His face, frozen in some final grimace, was made up like a woman’s and a curly wig sat askew on his head. Whatever the original colour of the lace on the nightdress, it was now red… blood-soaked. One of the man’s hands was clawed around a sword, which had impaled him to the bed, as if he had been trying to remove it before he died.

  A young woman, who seemed barely out of adolescence, stood by the body. She screamed when she saw the Sinclairs, clasping her cut and bloodied hands to her breast and recoiling in terror.

  Rowland waited for his brother’s lead.

  Wilfred spoke evenly, sternly. “Miss Dawe,” he said. “It’s Wilfred Sinclair… we met yesterday. This is my brother Rowland.”

  The young woman stopped screaming and, once reminded, she seemed to recognise Wilfred. “How do you do?” she choked before she crumpled by the bed, crying.

  Wilfred let her be. He motioned Rowland aside. “I’m going to fetch help. Lock the door behind me and admit no one till I return.”

  “What?”

  “Rowly this is Alfred Dawe, the Viscount of Pierrepont. That he is dead is difficult enough without the rest of this getting out.”

  “But…”

  “Just stay here and keep Miss Dawe calm if you can. Give her some brandy. I shouldn’t be long.”

  Given no other choice, Rowland did as his brother asked, though he did wonder fleetingly if he’d just bolted himself in with a murderess. He poured a generous brandy for the young woman who he coaxed into the sitting room. He put down the glass so that he could retrieve a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “We will have to find you a doctor,” he murmured, glancing uneasily at the bloody handprints on the bodice of her dress.

  She wrapped the monogrammed square of cloth around her right hand, which was the more seriously cut.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” he asked gently.

  “How did you?” she snapped, then seemed almost immediately regretful. “I was trying to get the sword out… so I could cover him up. I didn’t want anyone to see him like that.” She laughed harshly, maniacally. “You see, the man in the negligee and lipstick is my uncle.”

  At a loss as to how to comfort the girl, Rowland passed her the glass of brandy. She grasped it in two hands, both shaking, and lifting the tumbler to her lips, she downed the fortifying liquid in a single swig. She finished gasping.

  There was knocking on the door and a shout through the keyhole. “I say, is everything all right in there? The chaps and I heard the most frightful racket… Bunky? Are you all right, old bean?”

  Rowland pulled his arm out of the sling, struggling out of his jacket to place it around the shaking girl’s shoulders. He poured her another brandy, ignoring the shouts of, “Hold on, Bunky, we’re coming!” and the feeble thumps and groans as someone tried to force the door open.

  “Are you Bunky?” Rowland asked the young woman, hoping Wilfred would hurry.

  “Gosh, good heavens, no… Bunky is in there,” she added pointing at the bedroom. “I’m Allie… Allie Dawe.”

  “Rowland Sinclair, Miss Dawe. My condolences.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes welled again. “Oh my God!”

  “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked, glancing anxiously at the suite door which seemed to be taking a battering now.

  “I came in this morning to start work…”

  “Work?”

  “Uncle Alfred was kind enough to provide me with gainful and respectable employment as his private secretary when my father passed away. I came in through the tradesmen’s entrance because the club doesn’t allow women, you see. I let myself in and I found… oh my God!”

  Another commotion at the door. This time it was Wilfred’s voice. “Rowly, open the door.”

  Rowland did so, relieved. A crowd had assembled in the hallway: Wilfred; the steward, George; two uniformed policemen, another two in plain clothes; and half-a-dozen inebriated aristocrats who had risked life and lunch to come up from the dining room, one of whom looked distinctly unwell after having repeatedly charged the door.

  Wilfred led in the policemen and the steward, and shut out the club’s esteemed but intemperate members. The plain-clothes men introduced themselves as Asquith and Entwhistle. Entwhistle was from Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police made famous by Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes novels. Asquith did not say in what capacity he attended the crime scene, but Rowland guessed he was with the civil service in some role to which Scotland Yard deferred.

  While the uniformed constables seemed shocked by the scene of Lord Pierrepont’s demise, Entwhistle merely sighed, licked a pencil’s lead and took notes. Asquith looked irritated and weary. They conferred occasionally with Wilfred but generally ignored both Rowland and the steward.

  Allie Dawe drank a third and then a fourth glass of brandy after which she was less than coherent.

  “Rowly, would you escort Miss Dawe home?” Wilfred asked when the young woman began to sing mournfully. “I suspect she is… tired.”

  “Don’t you need—” Rowland began.

  “We have your details,” Entwhistle said as Allie Dawe broke into a rendition of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”. “Best get the young lady home if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “Not at all,” Rowland replied, grab
bing his hat from the mantel.

  “There’s a motor car waiting for you. Just tell the driver who you are,” Wilfred added.

  “Would you mind using the rear entrance, sir?” asked the steward. “I wouldn’t want to upset the members. We’re very strict about ladies being on the club’s premises.”

  “One of your members has just been impaled in a frilly nightie,” Rowland replied. “I would have thought, in the circumstances—”

  The steward shook his head firmly. “Regardless, ’tis club rules, sir.”

  “Rowly,” Wilfred warned.

  Rowland relented. George was, after all, just doing his job. He offered his uninjured arm to the bereaved Miss Dawe who took it, giggling, as she belted out “Onward, Christian Soldiers”. As they left the suite she lowered her voice to a hum, tiptoeing towards the back stairs though she stumbled often enough to render any stealth useless. Rowland was beginning to quite like Allie Dawe.

  A gleaming black Rolls Royce waited near the police cars, as Wilfred had promised. The portly chauffeur conveyed them discreetly away without so much as an improperly curious glance at, let alone a question about, the young lady with bloody hands leaving the scene of a crime.

  Allie lived with her mother and several small fluffy dogs in a terrace in Belgravia. Mrs. Dawe was, at Rowland’s guess, in her forties, an only slightly faded beauty with a refined constitution. She took one look at her daughter’s bloodied hands and promptly fainted. Fortunately, there was a housekeeper about—a stout, calm and capable matron who said little but acted swiftly. She dutifully assisted Rowland who, one armed, was ill-equipped to hold up both women.

  He settled Allie on the chaise while smelling salts were fetched for her mother. When Mrs. Dawe had been revived, the housekeeper attended to Allie’s injured hands with iodine and tight-lipped disapproval. Rowland introduced himself then.

  “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Sinclair,” Mrs. Dawe said frostily, glaring at her daughter. “It is not my habit to faint, but I am not accustomed to strange men bringing my daughter home intoxicated and bleeding in full view of the neighbours! Whatever will your uncle say, Allison? I demand to know the meaning of this!”

  Allie started to cry again, and so Rowland found himself left to explain to her furious mother that Alfred Dawe was dead and that Allie had cut her hands trying to remove the sword from his lifeless body.

  Mrs. Dawe fainted again.

  The housekeeper threw up her hands and glowered at Rowland. She retrieved the smelling salts muttering.

  “How are your hands?” he asked Allie quietly as her mother was revived for a second time.

  She showed him. The cuts were long but not as deep as he’d first thought. “I don’t need this anymore,” she slurred, handing him his very bloody handkerchief. “So thank you very much… you’ve been most kind.” She looked up at him with smiling glassy eyes. “You’re really rather handsome, Mr. Sinclair… I don’t know why I didn’t notice before.”

  Rowland smiled. “I suspect most people look significantly better after you’ve had a few stiff drinks.”

  She sighed. “Do you want to go dancing sometime?”

  Rowland laughed. He handed her his calling card. “I’m staying at Claridge’s if you need to contact me. I should probably go.”

  He glanced back at Mrs. Dawe who was just coming out of her faint, murmuring, “Bunky… dear Bunky… whatever shall we do without you?”

  “I am sorry I wasn’t more tactful with your mother.”

  Allie giggled. “You wait till I tell her that Uncle Alfred was wearing her nightie!”

  4

  LUKE AMONG THE PROPHETS

  It appears highly probable that Lord Luke, a director of the Australian Mercantile, Land, and Finance Company, also a director of Bovril Ltd., is one of the cautious persons behind the proposal that a chartered company, free from all restrictions by industrial awards and “the tyranny of union labour,” should be given many other concessions also, and be permitted to build up treasures on earth in the North Australian territory. Obviously this chartered company development proposal was fostered and encouraged by S. M. Bruce, Resident Commonwealth Minister in London, for better or worse, for Australia, but certainly for the expected benefit of some of his London associates in “gentlemen’s clubs” and other exclusive places wherein the Oxford bleat and the Cambridge “haw” provide the hallmark of social somebodyism.

  The Worker, 1933

  Rowland Sinclair returned quite thankfully to the sanctuary of Claridge’s to discover that his friends had stepped out. The summer afternoon was particularly warm and airless. He began to loosen his tie, and then, realising he would struggle to reinstate the knot, thought better of it.

  “Perhaps you would care to change your attire, sir?” Beresford suggested as he brought him a drink.

  “Change, why?” Rowland asked, wondering if there was some engagement he had forgotten.

  “I could have your suit cleaned and pressed before the stain sets, sir.”

  Rowland looked down and observed that there were indeed dry brown smears of blood on his jacket and a partial handprint on his shirt. He presumed they had come from the hands of Allie Dawe. At various points in their fleeting association, she had grabbed him to keep from stumbling.

  Rowland slung back his gin and stood. “You’re right—I should clean myself up. Thank you, Beresford.” He felt a self-conscious need to explain himself to the butler. He may indeed have done so if Beresford had not spoken first.

  “May I suggest your grey suit, sir, with the blue tie and onyx cufflinks if you are dining in your suite tonight? Otherwise I could lay out your dinner suit. I’m afraid you don’t have many other options at present.”

  “Just the grey, I think,” Rowland said, somewhat startled that the man had taken such careful stock of the contents of his wardrobe.

  “Shall I draw you a bath, sir?”

  “No, thank you, Beresford. I shall manage.” Rowland resisted an impulse to back away.

  The butler’s face was, as always, impassive. “If you’ll forgive my saying, sir, I’ve noticed that you and the other gentlemen are travelling very sparely in terms of attire. I know of a reputable tailor who has rendered his services in a most timely manner to Claridge’s guests in the past. Perhaps…”

  “Yes, an excellent idea, Beresford,” Rowland said, grateful for the suggestion but rather uncomfortable nonetheless. He had the distinct impression that Beresford found them a little wanting. “Would you make the arrangements as soon as possible, please?”

  Beresford inclined his head. “My pleasure, sir. I’m sure Mr. Ambrose will be able to measure you and the other gentlemen this evening if that would be convenient?”

  “Yes, tremendous, Beresford… thank you.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  It was as the butler retreated to make these arrangements that Edna, Clyde and Milton returned. They noticed the blood on his suit immediately.

  “ ’Struth, Rowly,” Clyde said, looking him over for new injuries. “What have you done to yourself this time?”

  “Me? Nothing.” Rowland recounted the rather extraordinary events of the morning at Watts.

  “What kind of nightie?” Clyde asked aghast.

  “How would I know? One of those short lacy things.”

  “A baby-doll,” Edna said with authority. “What colour was it?”

  “Well and truly red by the time Wil and I got there. Why does that matter?”

  “I was just trying to fix an image in my mind,” the sculptress said, screwing up her face.

  “I’m trying to expunge the image from mine,” Rowland replied. He shook his head. “Remind me to die in a suit.”

  Edna pulled off her gloves and flopped onto the settee beside him. “Do you believe poor Lord Pierrepont was wearing the… nightie, of his own accord?” she asked.

  A moment of awkward silence.

  “I’ve an uncle who likes to wear silk stockings and women’s shoes,” Milton
volunteered. “Sadly, he and my aunt don’t wear the same size.”

  “Oh yes, I remember him,” Edna laughed. She and Milton had known each other since childhood. “I recall he wore heels rather well.”

  “That’s him,” Milton’s voice held a note of admiration. “Actually, his legs weren’t bad at all. If they hadn’t been so hairy—”

  “You don’t suppose the girl did him in, do you, Rowly?” Clyde asked, desperate to change the subject.

  “Who, Allie?” Rowland shook his head. “She’s just a slip of a girl. I can’t see it.”

  “But he expired in her mother’s nightie, you say?” Milton rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  “That’s what she said.” Rowland frowned. It did seem odd, unless Lord Pierrepont was on intimate terms with his brother’s widow.

  “Did Miss Dawe have any idea who might have wanted to kill her uncle?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to ask her. After the brandy she was a trifle indisposed, to be honest.”

  “We’ll have to ask her when she’s sobered up,” Milton decided.

  “We?” Clyde said, alarmed. “Since when did this become our concern?”

  Milton puffed. “This is the concern of every man who ever coveted a frilly nightie or pretty heels; every young boy who ever wore a frock…” The poet paused, grinning in a manner that was quite evil.

  Clyde glared at him.

  Months ago, when he’d had far too much to drink, Clyde had admitted that he’d spent the first five years of his life dressed exclusively in hand-me-downs from his cousin, Charlie… more formally known as Charlotte. So that it would not look too odd, Mrs. Watson Jones had allowed Clyde’s hair to grow long and tied it up with ribbons. The idea that the burly, weather-beaten, no-nonsense Clyde had started life in bloomers amused the poet no end, and while Milton could be surprisingly discreet he was not always so.

  Rowland laughed and diplomatically moved the conversation away. “I’ll check on Allie in a day or two, just to make sure she’s holding up…”