The New Countess Read online

  Everyone laughed. The King was in fine good fettle and when the King was happy everyone was happy.

  ‘Thank you for coming out, my dear,’ he said, patting Alice’s hand. ‘Stand by me on the peg and keep me company. So I feel all is right with the world, and that there are some proper women left in it.’

  So at a quarter past two, when his Lordship called the return, and all trooped back to their pegs, Alice walked alongside the King’s wheeled chair. Strachan was still inspecting the perimeter, so his loader, one of the estate gamekeepers, took over the task of royal wheeling. Bertie rose from his chair to shoot when the birds flew: sat again when he had finished, and Alan the gamekeeper would hand him the fresh gun. He only felt happy when there was a loaded shotgun in his hand – preferably one of his favourite double-barrelled 16-bores. Alan was a slow-moving, stoical countryman and noticeably red-faced to boot – either the outdoor life or too much drink, it was hard to tell. Bertie became impatient at even a second’s delay, so Alice thought it wise to take over from Alan when the poor man fumbled – no doubt nervous in the royal presence. The pheasants flew; the King fired; the dogs ran; the birds rained down, glittering in red and gold, a magnificent sight. Surprising that so many seemed to come the King’s way – but the beaters knew what they were up to and the dog handlers too. No wonder the King’s bag filled so quickly, Alice thought.

  And then it happened. Ripon, on the right cried out, ‘It’s yours!’ and a great cock bird flew overhead – rather too low for comfort, perhaps – but the King let off his blast and sank back in his chair even as the bird fell, when this time Robert Dilberne, on the left, cried out likewise, ‘It’s yours’; so the King was on his feet again, taking the gun that Alan handed him, but such an exquisite pain ran through the royal knee that he stumbled and the shotgun went off of its own volition. It was definitely in the King’s hand when it went off.

  There was a sudden cry to the left where Dilberne’s head and shoulders could no longer be seen; then silence. Strachan appeared from nowhere to take the shotgun quickly from the King and hand it back to Alan, who stood transfixed. The King was back in his Bath chair, staring into space, clasping his knee.

  ‘What happened? What happened?’ he asked. ‘Alice?’

  There was a shriek and a shout and a ‘My God!’ from Dilberne’s direction, and a woman’s scream and then a dreadful silence; and then a Babel of dogs barking and people calling, and a confusion of cries and footfalls, and then Strachan’s security fellows, young and strong and well fed, emerged through the tangles of leafless trees and wintry bushes to tower above the little people, the underfed, the leaderless, the gamekeepers, the beaters, the loaders, the flankers, the followers, to take charge. They seemed larger and taller than ever: they fed on emergency.

  ‘Go and see!’ implored the King, and Alice went off to see, while Strachan handcuffed Alan and had him bundled off. He seemed too shocked and bewildered to object. Strachan tried to take the King’s gun but His Majesty clung to it, and Strachan desisted and went instead with Alice, and found Lord Dilberne on the ground, and a fountain of blood squirting from a hole in his neck. Rosina was trying to quench the fountain with the scarf which had held her hat on, but it was already drenched and useless.

  Strachan was at her side.

  ‘Come away, Mrs Keppel,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to be done. The jugular vein is punctured. He will bleed out in two minutes. He is not conscious, he feels no pain. Come now. The King needs you. A dreadful accident. The loader was to blame. I think you witnessed that. A drinking man from the look of him.’

  Alice could see there was no way that the King of England could have shot a close friend, even by accident. For all eternity it would be all a great King would be remembered for. Alfred burnt the cakes, Canute defied the tide, who was it drowned in a butt of Malmsey? Edward VII shot his best friend instead of a bird – no, Bertie deserved better than that.

  ‘Yes, I witnessed that,’ she said. ‘The gun went off in his loader’s hand. A drinking man.’

  Strachan flickered a half-smile at her: he nodded almost imperceptibly. The ground beneath her feet was growing dark from blood. ‘Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’ She spoke under her breath.

  ‘Macbeth, Act V,’ he said, without a pause. The Inspector was a man of surprises. Perhaps there was more to the Isobel-and-the-policeman rumour than she thought. Isobel was a widow now, the Dowager Countess. Arthur was the Earl: everything that his eye saw on a waking day belonged to him. The little boy playing with his toys on the nursery floor was now the Viscount; everything his eye could see when he looked out of the window would one day be his.

  Pappagallo fluttered over to Alice’s shoulder, and perched there. Alice could feel his thin, feathery body trembling against her ear. All day he had watched his own kind raining down as corpses from the sky. Now this. Or perhaps she was the one who was trembling. Strachan took her by the arm and led her back to the King, who sat with his face in his hands. He looked dreadfully old.

  ‘It was Dilberne,’ she said. ‘Your friend, Bertie. I’m so sorry. The loader’s gun went off. A dreadful fumbler. Your gun, but in his hands.’

  He looked up and nodded. She loved the King and the King loved her.

  They carried Robert Dilberne on a plank to the marquee, his white, white face staring up at the sky. Pheasants and partridges flew by above unheeded and unhindered, and the odd wild duck or two, and all lived to fly another day. The spaniels and Labradors were allowed to finish their work, nosing through the undergrowth, picking up the feathery corpses, filling up the bags: one of the keepers tallied the count. So many pheasant, so many partridge, so many duck; one lord of the manor. Will the new Earl go on with the shoots? It seems doubtful; all he cares about is cars. Nasty, noisy, smelly things.

  The Captains and the Kings Depart

  16th and 17th December 1905, The Dilberne Estate

  First the death, then would come the funeral. A security man’s nightmare. One was of course sorry for his Lordship, but it was no bad way to die. On a fine brisk winter’s day, surrounded by friends, pleasurably engaged, and so suddenly. Unlucky in one way, that a single wayward piece of shot should strike the jugular at the exact spot it did, tearing through all protective tissue; lucky in another that the victim was spared the lingering embarrassments of the traditional deathbed scene; as the body collapses and the family gathers. This was the clean quick finish of a man still in his prime, and one could wish it for oneself. One had witnessed far more gruesome an end.

  Sheer surprise neutralizes pain, Andrew Strachan was thinking. One loses consciousness within the minute, one bleeds out within two, and it is over. God’s good earth sops up the blood: they kept the dogs well away, though no doubt they will be sniffing around for weeks. These rural people have their sense and skills, more than many a city dweller. They had his Lordship on a plank and out of there while my men, fine, young and trained though they are, were still searching for their notebooks and tapes to measure velocities, angles and so forth.

  The one I respect greatly is Mrs Keppel. She kept her head in circumstances that would have most fine ladies screaming and distraught. Though in truth I have noticed a great stoicism and courage in the fine ladies I have met, from the Queen to the Countess of Dilberne – what I would call the straight-backedness of grandeur – in the way they face adversity. They are kind, they are beautiful, they are be-jewelled – but they take no prisoners.

  ‘Poor man,’ said Mrs Keppel, as she watched us take the wretched loader away, ‘what a fumbler he was! But do make sure his family is looked after.’

  And so they will be. He will lose two years of his life in prison on a manslaughter charge – and the prison will not be too uncomfortable – but will receive £5,000 in return for forgetting a few seconds of his life; a few seconds in which he handed the gun to the King. I do not think the King himself remembers those seconds; the pain in his knee was too acute, and the shock of su
ch an event tends to block out memory. He is not a young man. And Mrs Keppel, fortunately for the nation, has chosen not to remember.

  I was able to assure Mrs Keppel that the loader – Alan Barker, one of the gamekeepers, and engaged to Elsie the head parlourmaid at Dilberne Court – would be looked after. It was as well that both parties were so closely associated with the family: servants might bicker and gossip amongst themselves but, when it came to it, were fiercely loyal to their families. Alan would not argue, and Elsie would not encourage him to do so; they would get married and live happily ever after. Mrs Keppel was tact itself. I could not, of course, give her details, but she understood what I was saying; and I was amused by the implicit threat. If we didn’t look after Alan Barker her story might have to change. She is a wonderful woman. Almost as wonderful as Isobel.

  Her Ladyship behaved with such dignity and composure when the body was brought back it made an impression on me I cannot forget. The King returned in the Daimler together with the daughter Lady Rosina, Mrs Keppel and myself. The parrot, now back on Lady Rosina’s shoulder, quite spoiled the solemnity of the occasion. It pecked away at its mistress’s bloodstained jacket – a severed jugular creates quite a mess – and the poor girl seemed too distraught to shake the bird off or somehow distract its inquisitive beak. I could have wrung its neck.

  The body was brought in and laid in the drawing room which Isobel had made so pretty, bright and light, and, under my instructions, so secure. Metal windows can be properly locked, ancient latticed ones, however attractive, cannot be made safe.

  ‘How did it happen?’ Isobel asked. She was in a daze. I quickly explained.

  ‘I would have gladly given my life for him,’ His Majesty said. ‘A dear good man. A friend: they are so rare. Man proposes, God disposes. I have known so many die in my time. I will leave you to your grief, my dear Isobel. It will be hard to bear, I know only too well.’ It was both eloquent and moving and Isobel, still dazed, nodded her appreciation of this tribute from the King.

  ‘Too right, mate. Too right,’ squawked the parrot, and for some reason on this occasion it seemed more like a tribute from the world of the beasts than any kind of offence. They were offering their sympathy.

  My first concern of course was the welfare of His Majesty: I escorted him and Mrs Keppel back to his room. My priority now was to get him home to Sandringham and his normal security team. The grounds there at least are efficiently patrolled. There had been rumours in Dilberne that a disgruntled employee – the former Gatehouse keeper and one suspected of republican sympathies – had been seen scuttling about the woods in the past weeks, armed with a shotgun. He might well have been a poacher going about his normal business, but down at the Dilberne Arms the poaching fraternity swore he was none of theirs. We could take no chances: a resentful person is vulnerable to anarchist propaganda; reasonable protest can quickly turn to violence; an armed conspiracy could have been afoot. It was something of a relief to have His Majesty safely indoors once again, though the circumstances were deplorable.

  I found her Ladyship looking down on the quiet, pale body of her lifeless husband. She ran her finger over the skin of his cheek. She made a picture I do not forget; graceful and slender in a lilac tea gown. It is engraved in my heart. Still her Ladyship did not cry. She swayed a little and I had to steady her. I will not say she leaned on me but I felt she needed my presence. It is true that through the past weeks I have been a great support to her. Then Lady Rosina emerged from her stunned state, noisily, like her parrot, and fell theatrically upon the body.

  ‘Oh Mama, at least I was there,’ sobbed Lady Rosina. ‘It was an accident. I saw him die. It was so quick. Quicker than when poor Frank died. There was nothing I could do.’

  I had quite forgotten that Lady Rosina too was a widow. Such was the company she kept it was easy to forget. Nor did she wear a wedding ring. Isobel was not the kind who would remove her ring: if she married again she would remove it perhaps to another finger. I would of course keep the matter of the Brazilian girl from her Ladyship, and indeed the nature of her daughter’s relationships: what the eyes don’t see the heart will not grieve over.

  My masters had come to the conclusion that the household at No. 3 Fleet Street was not after all a cause for concern: the parties there were too involved with their personal situations to have much time for political conspiracy. Suspicions had been roused by the collaboration of Ford Madox Hueffer, of German origin, and Joseph Conrad, a Pole, both of them using The Modern Idler as a mouthpiece. Conrad’s essay ‘Autocracy and War’ had caused particular concern, but turned out to have been rejected by Mr Robin in favour of a piece of the Pole’s rather gloomy fiction. I myself thought his essay was fairly perceptive and perhaps prophetic, but a nation has to keep its intellectuals under control. Mr Brown turns out to have protectors in high places: in a perfect world the Honourable Anthony Robin and his friend would be thrown in prison but thank God it is not a perfect world. In my opinion people must find their happiness where best they can.

  By now other members of the shooting party were drifting back to the house, on foot, by carriage or cart. Those who had set out so bravely that morning returned so miserably that afternoon! All were stricken; the staff silent and dutiful. Most guests went to their rooms, others grouped in the great hall under the giant chandelier and stood around talking in hushed voices. Mr Neville, red-eyed, served brandy. I had had the chandelier’s rusty iron chains replaced with steel – at least there was no danger of further fatalities, as there had been when I first went to Dilberne Court. His Lordship had complained that the reddish-black of the old slender chains was more attractive than the shiny, solid steel of the sturdy new ones, but soon came round to my point of view. Safety must come before aesthetics. His Lordship was a reasonable man and will be sorely missed.

  ‘Too right, mate!’ barked the parrot into a room already disturbed by Lady Rosina’s sobs. Isobel’s grief emerged as anger.

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Rosina,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear myself think. Do go and get out of those horrible clothes and into something not so blood sodden. Just throw them away. Burn them. Let Lily choose for once. She has good taste. And get that evil bird out of my sight. I will not have it in this house again.’

  Lady Rosina composed herself, I must say with some dignity, straightening her body and dashing away her tears. Women of breeding, even Rosina, command my great respect.

  ‘Mother,’ she said, ‘this is not your house. It is now my brother’s, and Minnie’s. Minnie quite likes Pappagallo.’

  Her Ladyship stared at her daughter, her face impassive. But in my mind’s eye I saw a whole row of dominos falling, each one as it fell knocking its fellow over, inexorably, until all were down. The Ladies Desborough and Ripon came into the room to surround her Ladyship in a flurry of sympathy, concern and the pastel shades of the most expensive tea gowns imaginable. Their tweedy husbands followed to hum and haw. I went back to my room to organize the King’s departure to Sandringham and check on Alan Barker’s incarceration, and left them to it.

  So far as the new Countess, Minnie, is concerned it occurs to me that her suspicions of her husband’s infidelities are unfounded: equally that the new Earl’s rejection of his wife is unreasonable: she is to be pitied and forgiven rather than condemned. Thank God the divorce is only talked about, not enacted. They could yet come together. Anthony Robin, who will no doubt go on spreading trouble like the green bay tree, rejecting what is good in favour of what is bad as in Mr Conrad’s essay, is the villain of the piece; his sister Diana, so loved by Lady Rosina, is just an amiable idiot.

  I, the Inspector, knowing what I do, find myself in a position of considerable power. But if I brought about a reunion, which is as I can see within my competence, husband, wife and two children would be reunited as God intended, and be as likely to live happily ever after as anyone else. They might even have daughters to carry on the blood line of beautiful and gracious women.

  But wh
at then will happen to her Ladyship, to Isobel? If I leave well alone, she will continue flitting between Belgrave Square and Dilberne Court, discarding this and choosing that, for the rest of her days. She might marry again: she is young enough and lovely enough. Though not, I fear, particularly rich: their mine at the Modder Kloof is not doing quite so well: the refurbishing of Dilberne Court has drained even deep pockets dry. Lloyd George is gaining power: he will probably be made President of the Board of Trade; his lot will end up taxing the landowning classes until they whimper. But she will cope, with her usual astuteness.

  If I speak up, Minnie will be the new Countess. She will have Belgrave Square and Dilberne Court under her care; she will do what she wants with them. She will throw out the bamboo furniture and reinstate the old carved oak monstrosities: let Arthur turn the estate into one big racing track for his Jehus – which to my mind will never amount to much: he is far too indecisive. Unlike Mr Austin who makes up his mind and sticks with it: I have seen him in action. She will convert the billiard room into an artist’s studio with proper north light. She may even disagree with him about sending the children to Eton. Arthur will argue back but Minnie could well win. They love each other, and they love their children: Master Edgar, whom Arthur brought into the world with his own bare (if oily) hands: sturdy freckled Master Connor: little lions, little lambs.

  If I speak up, Isobel, as the Dowager Countess, will be relegated to the Dower House.

  It is falling down; bats cluster inside it; swallows nest in the attics. Cesspits will have to be replaced with septic tanks. It has no proper heating, no electric lighting. But her Ladyship will enjoy that: something else to achieve, to improve, to make good. She might even come to terms with Minnie: they got on well in the beginning, and they might well again.