Grab Bag (11 page)

Gerald Potherton was a younger son, with his way to make in the world. His attachment to the Honourable Ermentine might exclude him from suspicion, but how could he know His Lordship’s daughter might not suddenly transfer her affections elsewhere, and who was to say that madcap miss hadn’t put him up to it?

As for Count Bratvuschenko—well, they would just have to see.

And see they did! The door to the room that was to have been occupied by the foreign nobleman had been left open by the footman in his agitation. Through the orifice, all could see a heterogeneous group of objects dropped carelessly on the bed. There was a furry something that proved on closer inspection to be Bratvuschenko’s bushy brown beard, as well as his luxuriant head of hair. There was his eyeglass. There were his medals, his sash, his tail coat, and even his embonpoint.

“A padded waistcoat, by George!” exclaimed Hellespont. “The blighter was heavily disguised.”

“But why would any man weesh to make heemself fat and ugly?” demanded Mme. Vigée-Lenoir.

“That, madame, is a question we must all ask ourselves,” replied Hellespont, “though I deem it more pertinent to consider where the former inhabitant of these trappings may be at this moment.”

Well might he consider. Little did Hellespont know that even as he spoke, a figure far removed from the guzzling buffoon he had last seen at the dinner table was searching assiduously through Hellespont’s own personal effects. Nor were the discoveries thus made of a particularly edifying nature. What was an intimate of Lord Ditherby-Stoat doing with a pack of marked cards in his possession, not to mention a threatening letter from his bookmaker and several photographs of the sort of young women who are only facetiously referred to as ladies? And why should a cabinet-size portrait of the Honourable Ermentine be found in such less than dubious company? Lastly, what was contained within this box of a mysterious powder, that had a picture of a horse crudely limned on the cover?

Already, the rooms of the other guests had been searched. Mrs. Swiveltree’s had yielded a large bill from her milliner, a still larger one from her dressmaker, a picture of her husband looking stern and relentless, another of a foreign-looking gentleman with a pencil-thin mustache and a languorous eye, this latter inscribed with words in a foreign tongue that had caused the searcher’s eyebrows to rise in sardonic amusement. There was also a box of a mysterious powder in a pale pink color, delicately scented and enigmatically labeled
“Coty.”

Mme. Vigée-Lenoir’s room had contained, aside from the expected feminine fripperies, certain articles of interest to the inscrutable searcher. Notable among these were dunning letters in French from her
modiste,
her
coiffeuse,
and her
boulanger;
a cachet of some mysterious powder labeled “For Teething Infants,” and one glorious pendant earring of blazing rubies and sparkling brilliants, along with a note which, translated from the French, read simply but meaningfully, “You know what you must do to get its mate.”

The late Silas Whipsnade’s luggage, as might have been expected from His Lordship’s recent revelation, contained an identification card from the Eye-Spye Detective Agency; made out, however, in the name of Silas Whipsnade rather than Augustus Fox. It would appear that the detective was determined to preserve his alias at any cost. There was a letter from Lord Ditherby-Stoat engaging the detective to come to Haverings on the weekend of the house party, and enclosing a personal cheque for a sum that sent the eyebrows soaring again. The soi-disant Whipsnade had used the letter for certain private jottings, scribbling Hellespont’s name with a large question mark after it, and Mme. Vigée-Lenoir’s under a caricature that can best be described as rude. He had even added a whimsical bar sinister to the family crest engraved on the letterhead. Other than those vagaries and a box of a mysterious gray powder labeled “For Fingerprints,” the luggage carried nothing of interest.

Gleanings from the mean apartment of Miss Twiddle were more surprising. Drab and mousy though her outer garments might be, it transpired that the companion possessed unmentionables of flaming scarlet. Cunningly disguised in plain brown paper jackets were a whole row of sensational novels. The searcher had not been able to suppress a low whistle as he scanned the torrid pages of Ouida and the passionate outpourings of Mrs. Aphra Behn. He had also taken a cautious sniff at a small bundle of mysterious packets of a white powder labeled “To Be Taken with Meals.”

A hasty trip from that secret haven of romantic rodomontade to Figgleton’s basement room was a study in contrasts. Aside from his pantry book and the daily newspaper, the late butler’s reading matter appeared to have been confined to the “Peerage”; and his correctly butlerian wardrobe to have contained but one incongruous item—namely, a baby’s diaper embroidered with the crest of the family he had so loyally served; a Stoat Rampant on a Field Vert. His well-polished shoes had recently been fitted with patent arch supports, and his collar box contained not only the expected neckware but also a small box of a mysterious powder bearing the inscription “Pep-U-Uppo (Patent Applied For).”

Gerald Potherton’s room had contained little of interest save several fruitless attempts to pen an ode to his “lost love,” a somewhat surprising theme considering Ermentine’s obvious though possibly temporary attachment, a dunning letter from his tailor couched in terms far from poetic, a lurid spy novel, and a tin of a mysterious powder represented as “Mustache Strengthener.”

Lord Ditherby-Stoat’s sumptuous quarters were hardly more fruitful. Aside from the empty dispatch-box and the copy of
Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,
there were only such accoutrements as might have been expected: a signed portrait of Her Gracious Majesty in a heavy silver frame, another of Lady Ditherby-Stoat in her presentation gown, a photograph of Lord Ditherby-Stoat himself in full dress with orders standing beside a bust of his great ancestor, a baby’s diaper embroidered with the Ditherby-Stoat coat of arms, and a phial of a mysterious substance labeled “Rhinoceros Horn,” no doubt the gift of some foreign emissary.

Lady Ditherby-Stoat had not been spared in this relentless search, and some surprises had eventuated. Little would her acquaintances have divined the vein of sentiment that ran behind that “icily regular, splendidly null” façade. Hidden beneath the scented padding in her hosiery drawer were an unsigned lace valentine, a faded rose, and a much-creased note bearing the poignant words, “Although you can never be mine, I shall cherish you in my heart forever,” and signed with the single initial
P,
these precious tokens all folded inside the sheet music of Tosti’s touching ballad, “Goodbye.” Beside them lay a packet of a mysterious powder marked “For the Nerves.”

The Honourable Ermentine’s boudoir had revealed all the froufrous and whimsies to be expected of a pleasure-loving young lady. There was a box of bonbons, half its sugary contents devoured. There was a veritable snowstorm of dance cards, on which the names of General Potherton and A. Lysander Hellespont appeared frequently. More surprisingly, on the topmost card, Count Bratvuschenko had written himself down for a
galop.
And shuffled in among the heap, as if to conceal it from the eyes of her maid or possibly her mother, was an unsigned note on lilac-coloured paper bearing the perhaps teasing, perhaps ominous, words, “I know your secret.”

Also attracting the searcher’s notice was an ornate crystal jar full of some mysterious scented substance labeled enigmatically “Bath Salts.” He was turning this bit of evidence over in his strong, well-shaped hands when, as chance would have it, the Honourable Ermentine flew into the room on the urgent mission of tucking up a stray ringlet. Catching sight of the intruder, she stopped short, her eyes blazing fearlessly.

“What,” she demanded imperiously, “are you doing with my bath salts?”

“I am doing this.”

The tall man snatched up a delicate porcelain pin tray, ruthlessly dumped its contents on the dressing table, sending hatpins and glove stretchers in every direction, and spilled out the bath salts into the tray. Picking up an ivory-handled buttonhook, he then stirred the crystalline mass, wafting a fragrance as of violets throughout the chamber. In horrified fascination, Ermentine watched. Then she gasped.

“What is that?”

Her quivering finger pointed to a small glass ampoule that now glistened atop the heap of bath salts.

“Well you may ask,” said the unknown in portentous tone. “Unless I am mistaken, which I must say has never happened thus far, this little ampoule contains at least one more lethal dose of the unknown Asiatic poison by means of which the late Silas Whipsnade was so recently and efficaciously done to death under our very eyes.”

“Then don’t tell me who did it. If you dropped dead in the midst, like Mr. Whipsnade, I should never be able to explain to Mama how a strange man’s corpse got into my bedroom.”

She was to have trouble enough explaining the presence of a live one, judging from the expression on her mother’s face as Lady Ditherby-Stoat entered the room, followed by the rest of the party.

“Ermentine, who is this person?”

“I have not yet got round to asking him his name, Mama,” replied the minx. “I found him fishing an unknown poison out of my bath salts.”

“Confound you, villain!” cried Gerald Potherton, springing to the fore with his fists at the ready for a knockdown blow. “How dare you attempt to defame the name of a lady?”

“Nothing was farther from my mind, I assure you,” replied the stranger. “I am but attempting to defend my own.”

With a low bow, he proffered an engraved calling card, which Potherton could not but read.

“Augustus Fox, forsooth! Ruffian, you are making sport of me. Augustus Fox lies a stiffening corpse in the … Ermy dearest, would you happen to recall what the footman did with Mr. Whipsnade?”

“Mr. Whipsnade is in the butler’s pantry with the late Percival Figgleton,” Fox informed Potherton. “Though this was not the first time he has taken my name in vain, Whipsnade was in fact none other than himself, an insignificant employee of a third-rate detective agency. His only genuine ability lay in his adroitness at aiding unscrupulous persons in their fell designs and blackmailing them when their perfidies had been accomplished.”

“What perfidies?” demanded Lady Ermentine.

“Any perfidies,” Fox replied with a tolerant smile. “Let us suppose, for instance, that an unlucky gambler determined upon doping the Derby favorite but needed help in obtaining the requisite potion. Or a cocaine smuggler wished to expand her already thriving market. Or the young wife of an elderly tycoon had fallen in love with a handsome adventurer and required a means of rendering the old man unconscious so that she could join her paramour in the happy task of turning her gems to paste so that he and she would have a tidy nest egg with which to elope.”

He shrugged. “But this is mere speculation. And so, I fear, is the question of what prompted Whipsnade’s impromptu funeral oration. Did such scruples as he might still possess prompt his attempted denouncement of a crime too heinous even for him to stomach? Was it rather part of a subtle ruse devised between himself and his final employer? Or was he endeavoring to make a public example of his latest victim in order to stimulate the payment of Danegeld from the others? We shall never know. May I suggest that we descend to the drawing room before we attack the problem of who concealed the poison capsule in Miss Ermentine’s bath salts? I quite agree with Mr. Potherton as to the unsuitability of polluting these chaste walls with further sordid revelations.”

With one accord they made for the staircase, Fox stooping to retrieve the delicately perfumed lace handkerchief which Mme. Vigée-Lenoir dropped at his feet, and restoring it to her with a gentlemanly gesture that yet made plain he was not the man to be trapped by so transparent a ruse.

When all were reassembled in the majestic salon, Fox indicated that he was ready to resume his narrative, though not before the Honourable Ermentine had observed, “I never knew Figgleton’s given name was Percival.”

“Ah,” said Fox, whom the aside had naturally not escaped. “But therein lies the gist, or nub, of my tale. Miss Twiddle, you are, are you not, the sister of the late Percival Figgleton?”

As though by necromantic means, the drabness and mousiness disappeared. An inch of scarlet petticoat showed beneath the drooping gray hem as Miss Twiddle drew herself up proudly. “I am.”

“Then you must know what weighty secret it was that your brother carried for lo, these many years.”

Figgleton carried lots of secrets,” Lord Ditherby-Stoat interrupted peevishly. “I trusted him, damme.”

“And worthily did he uphold that trust,” said Lady Ditherby-Stoat most unexpectedly.

“Percival could do no other,” cried Miss Twiddle. “Ne’er drew he an ignoble breath.”

“What does she mean, ne’er drew he?” Gerald muttered to Ermentine.

“I don’t know. I think it’s poetry.” For once, that ebullient young woman was sober, gazing at Miss Twiddle’s scarlet petticoat as if gripped by some force she could not understand.

“Trustworthy is an adjective that cannot be applied to at least one other person in this room.” Fox’s keen, penetrating eyes traveled among the assemblage, resting first on Mme. Vigée-Lenoir, then on Hellespont, and lastly on Mrs. Swiveltree. “To get at the root of this matter, we must ask ourselves, who benefits most from the theft of the plans for the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship? Or, as we used to say at Harrow,
cui bono!”

“Mrs. Swiveltree,” said Ermentine promptly. “Mr. Swiveltree will be so pleased they’re gone that he’ll pay her dressmaker’s bills without a murmur.”

“I should be rather inclined to vote for Mme. Vigée-Lenoir,” drawled A. Lysander Hellespont. “I fancy a certain cabinet minister in a certain country not more than a Channel’s swim from here will do rather more than pay her dressmaker’s bills.”

“And I, on ze ozzer hand, wondaire how zese plans may affect ze plans of Monsieur Hellespont’s bookmakaire,” retorted the Frenchwoman viciously.