Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess Read online

  Another thing they did not know at the time was that when the wreckage of the Seefeuergewehrfliegflügel was examined (before being quickly removed by government agencies) only one body was found, that of the pilot. Somehow The McCluggan of McCluggan has escaped. It seemed unlikely that he could have survived the inferno of the crash, so he was reckoned to have bailed out with a parachute before the attacks on Buckingham Palace, and somehow disappeared into the busy streets of London.

  Which meant of course that the defeat of his fleet of seaplanes did not spell the end of the Crimson Thumb, and that he might reappear at some later date with another dastardly plan to take over the world.

  But such thoughts did not concern Twinks. She was more worried about Jerome Handsomely, who had taken a couple of bullets in the chest when the glass of his cockpit had been shattered by enemy fire. He was bleeding profusely and soon became too weak to control the damaged biplane.

  ‘You take over the button-box, me old iced bun. I’ll talk you down.’

  With difficulty they changed places and Twinks took the controls. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Jerome?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh yes, just a flesh wound,’ he assured her, coughing blood the while.

  ‘Where are we flying to?’

  ‘Croydon Aerodrome. Plenty of away-chockers there who’ll get this crate back to battle fitness quicker than a doctor’s bill. Touch of left on the helmrod.’

  Twinks duly gave a touch of left on the helmrod and the plane readjusted its trajectory. She had never flown a plane before, but she found Jerome Handsomely’s instructions easy to follow. The only thing that worried her was that, the further they went, the fainter and fainter his voice became.

  Still doing exactly as he told her, she made a perfect landing at Croydon Aerodrome. ‘Booming good show,’ he murmured. ‘Lot of professional away-chockers I know wouldn’t have tickled the tarmac as gently as that.’

  Expertly, Twinks taxied the biplane alongside a hangar and then looked at Jerome Handsomely. He was very pale. The blood had soaked his khaki shirt and was now pouring down his leather jacket. ‘We need to get you to a doctor as quick as a lizard’s lick.’

  ‘Not worth the tribulation,’ he sighed. ‘I’m a busted flush. Crocking business, life, ain’t it?’

  ‘But, Jerome, I’m sure you can be saved,’ said Twinks, more for form’s sake than anything else. She didn’t really think that a likely outcome.

  ‘Don’t fret. All trucky-trockle with me. You see, I’ve got what I wanted,’ he gasped.

  ‘What, Jerome?’

  ‘I’m laying down my life for you, Twinks.’

  ‘Well, that’s very sweet of you – and much appreciated.’

  The pilot’s eyes were beginning to glaze over. ‘I love you, Twinks,’ he murmured.

  Now many women, whatever the precise nature of their feelings towards him, would have eased Jerome Hand-somely’s passage into eternity by saying ‘I love you too.’ But Twinks was very particular about emotional issues like that. She didn’t love him, so she didn’t say anything, just cradled his body as she felt the last spasm of life shudder through it and heard the sound of his death rattle.

  And she really thought her amour with Jerome Handsomely had been one of the more successful ones of her life.

  33

  Justice Done

  Brother and sister were reunited at Tawcester Towers. As was her wont, once she had thrown away the inevitable accumulation of love letters which had built up during her absence, Twinks wrote up a full dossier of the investigation. This was quickly passed over to Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull. As was their wont, after only one reading of the document, Inspector Trumbull and Sergeant Knatchbull had convinced themselves that they had solved the case themselves.

  The innocence of Corky Froggett in the matter of the Dowager Duchess of Melmont’s death having been firmly established, he was released. Master and chauffeur were happily reunited, though Blotto did curb Corky’s excessive protestations about how willing he would have been to lay his life on the line for him. Blotto felt he’d heard enough of that sort of stuff to last a lifetime from Jerome Handsomely.

  He didn’t feel the ease which normally enveloped him as soon as he entered his ancestral home. Laetitia Melmont had come with him to Tawcester Towers and he knew it was only a matter of time before the Dowager Duchess issued him with his matrimonial marching orders.

  In retrospect, the adventure which had just concluded couldn’t have been worse from Blotto’s point of view. Not only had he succeeded in rescuing Laetitia Melmont, he had also spent the best part of a day driving with her from Glenglower Castle to London. Ruefully he remembered the Mater telling him that ‘Catholics are even less tolerant than normal people of unchaperoned young persons of different genders being alone together.’ Oh, broken biscuits, there was no way he was going to escape marriage this time.

  The summons didn’t come as soon as he expected. The Dowager Duchess had invited Laetitia Melmont to stay at Tawcester Towers as long as she wished, which was in itself a bad sign. And during her visit, Laetitia was encouraged to spend as much time as possible alone with Blotto. He grew gloomier and gloomier at the inevitability of a lifetime’s shackling to ‘the Snitterings Ironing-Board’. He looked at the example of Loofah and Sloggo, and groaned.

  Finally one day he heard from Twinks that the Dowager Duchess had summoned Laetitia Melmont to meet her in the Blue Morning Room. This was ominous. There was a daunting formality about the Blue Morning Room; it was from there that most of the Dowager Duchess’s pronouncements were issued. And the Dowager Duchess was something of a specialist in pronouncements.

  The two women seemed to be incarcerated in there for a surprisingly long time. Sorting through financial details, Blotto thought wretchedly. But eventually Grimshaw summoned him from the billiard room to join the ladies.

  The Dowager Duchess immediately announced that she was going to bully the cook about dinner. She left the Blue Morning Room with the ominous instruction that: ‘I’m sure you young people have a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we do,’ agreed Blotto miserably after his mother had left. Even in the dungeon of Glenglower Castle he hadn’t felt such restriction of his freedom as he did at that minute.

  ‘Blotto,’ said Laetitia Melmont, ‘your mother is expecting you to ask me to marry you.’

  ‘I know,’ he concurred pitifully. ‘Do you actually want me to go through the business of going down on one knee and asking you and all that rombooley, or are we just going to accept the Mater’s word on it?

  ‘You can ask me if you like,’ replied Laetitia.

  Blotto got down on one knee and tried to think of the right way to do it. Last thing he wanted to do was to offend the old fruitbat, but somehow the words clogged his throat like lumpy porridge.

  ‘Erm . . .’ he said eventually. It always seemed to be a safe opening conversational gambit.

  ‘Before you say anything, Blotto, there’s something I need to say.’

  Oh, broken biscuits, he thought, here we go. No doubt a set of rules that I’ll have to obey once the noose is actually round my neck. Cut down on the brandy and soda, less billiards, fewer days hunting . . . He knew of other poor old thimbles who’d had their pleasures curtailed by matrimony in similar ways. Some of them would have had more freedom of movement in a plaster cast.

  ‘The thing is,’ Laetitia boomed, ‘I have had a lot of opportunity in the last weeks to think about love.’

  ‘Oh, have you?’ Blotto tried unsuccessfully to keep the gloom out of his voice.

  ‘And I have decided that, of all human beings, Blotto, you are the only one that I have ever loved.’

  Rodents, he thought, this is it. A sentence involving the words ‘slaughter’ and ‘lamb’ came unbidden into his head.

  ‘But, Blotto, in this world human love is not the only kind of love.’

  What the strawberries was she on about?

  ‘You know, B
lotto, that I am a Catholic’

  ‘Tickey-tockey. Yes, and the Mater said that Catholics have some very odd ideas when it comes to . . .’ He hesitated, not wishing to quote his mother exactly. ‘. . . er, marriage and all that kind of rombooley,’ he finished feebly.

  ‘The fact is, Blotto, that my faith is very strong . . .’

  ‘Good ticket.’

  ‘Is your faith strong, Blotto?’

  He made do with another ‘Erm . . .’ Like most of the aristocracy, Blotto was robustly Church of England, a comfortable situation which did not involve believing in anything in particular. He filled the ensuing silence with that reliable conversational fall-back, a ‘Well . . .’

  ‘The fact is,’ Laetitia Melmont suddenly blurted out, ‘I want to become a nun!’

  ‘Oh?’ said Blotto, hardly daring to believe that his ears had served him right.

  ‘It is something I have considered for a long time, but while I was incarcerated by the League of the Crimson Hand I had the opportunity to read deeply in the Catholic divines.’

  ‘Did you, by Jove?’

  ‘Ignatius Loyola, Thomas Aquinas . . .’

  ‘Oh, the horse boddo, yes.’

  ‘. . . and I have decided that I have a vocation, to renounce worldly pleasures and devote my life to the contemplation of the Almighty.’

  ‘Ah, right, well, yes. I gather it does take some people that way.’

  ‘I know how much pain my decision will cause you, Blotto.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’ll probably pull through,” he replied, hope reopening within his heart like a flower. Then, realizing that that might sound too readily accepting, he added soberly, ‘Though it’ll take a spoffing long time.’

  ‘Perhaps after your disappointment,’ Laetitia bellowed, ‘you too will find a vocation.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got one, actually. Hunting.’

  ‘I meant a religious vocation.’

  ‘Did you? Well, yes, I suppose I might develop one. Never say you’re out of luck till the croupier’s got your last chip, eh?’

  While he was with Laetitia, Blotto managed to keep his expression that of a man all of whose romantic hopes have just been dashed. But the minute he got out of the Blue Morning Room, he was unable to contain a gazelle-like leap across the hall and an ecstatic ‘Hooppee-doopee!’

  He thought of going to share the good news with Twinks, but this was something on a scale that transcended the mere love of siblings. For a moment he considered going to stroke and sniff and commune with the linseed smell of his cricket bat. But then he decided the most satisfying course would be to go and share his exaltation with his hunter Mephistopheles.

  And so life at Tawcester Towers returned to its torpid normality. Loofah, unaware of how close he and his peers had come to obliteration, got on with the thankless task of trying to impregnate Sloggo with a boy. Twinks, rather bored by the latest round of men swearing undying devotion to her, wrote to Professor Erasmus Holofernes to send her a novel in Serbo-Croat that she wanted to translate into Mandarin.

  And Blotto? Oh, he went hunting.