for a beginning, and Lady Sara had moved the pegs two holes forward.
The Shadwell murder had been left in Chief Inspector Mewer’s hands. I once suggested giving the Chief Inspector a cribbage board of his own to record his cases on, but Lady Sara said no, he wouldn’t know how to use it. This was probably true. I had never been able to understand how Lady Sara used hers. She had her own subjective system for rating her progress on cases.
Sir Thomas greeted me with friendly scrutiny. He liked to make jokes about the state of my health. He remarked, “Colin has been unusually reticent of late. Is he in love?”
“He has been reading Mrs. Humphry’s Manners for Men,” Lady Sara said. “In the last chapter, she lays down rules for speaking with royal persons, and Colin is grappling with the notion that during such conversations he must leave it to the royal person to originate subjects of discussion and never, under any circumstances, introduce a topic of his own. If you want him to talk, you have to suggest a subject and invite his comments.”
“But I’m not a royal person,” Sir Thomas protested.
“You are a knight,” Lady Sara said. “That, with your other qualifications and achievements, would fully entitle you to royal treatment if ‘royalty’ really meant anything.” She added thoughtfully, “It’s an asinine rule. Most royal persons have nothing in their heads but lumber. They’re completely incapable of suggesting subjects worth discussing. Quite apart from that, it was silly of Mrs. Humphry to include such a topic in her book. How many of her readers will ever have occasion to converse with royalty?”
“Not all royal persons are empty-headed,” Sir Thomas said loyally. “You’ll have to concede we are blessed with a great queen.”
Lady Sara shook her head. “Her Majesty’s only accomplishment is to be herself. She has never done anything else. She was popular in her youth, extremely unpopular in middle age, and now she is popular again. All of that has been the result of her being herself. In any situation that requires nothing more of her than that, she performs magnificently. A truly great queen should be able to reach beyond herself when a great occasion demands it.”
“What does the royal family think of you?” Sir Thomas asked.
“Princess Louise is a good friend,” Lady Sara said. “As you know, she is a talented artist, and we have interests in common as well as mutual friends in London’s Bohemia. When I first came out, the Prince of Wales thought I was fascinating until I made it clear that I thought he wasn’t. The others don’t think of me at all except when something I do is forced on their attention. Then they dismiss me with tones of deep regret.”
Like Lady Sara’s rooms upstairs, her study was furnished severely. There were no bric-a-brac. Everything had a place and a use. The books that lined the walls were on every imaginable subject. Although crime was Lady Sara’s principal concern, she was interested in everything about it, and since crime touched every sphere of human activity, she was interested in everything.
The two artists, Stephen Lynes and Evan Vaughan, had just arrived, and Lady Sara was still greeting them, when the Dowager Countess, Lady Ranisford, swept into the room. She was small, plump, and as unlike Lady Sara as could be imagined. She had come over from Connaught Place because Lady Sara had told her Sir Thomas would be there.
She brought with her Reginald Dempster, a cousin of hers and Lady Sara’s several times removed. He was a man about forty, slight of build except for an ample stomach, with a small, almost frivolous moustache. He was always impeccably dressed, and he had the air of waiting for some higher calling, although no one who knew him, least of all himself, had the slightest notion of what that might be. When he was younger, he had been, for a time, heir presumptive to a baronetcy. Then the present baronet remarried, taking a second wife much younger than himself, and in short order produced a large family that included several sons. This naturally was a considerable disappointment to Dempster and his wife—especially to his wife, since she had married him on the presumption of his inheritance. He lived on a limited fixed income, a legacy from an aunt. He was always short of money and apparently incapable of earning any even though he had received a Third in law from Oxford and had been called to the bar.
Lady Sara considered him both a bore and an ass, and years before she had, with effort, cured him of his attempts to borrow money from her. He both thought and spoke in clichés, which she found irritating. When he delivered himself of some such profundity as, “I can’t make head nor tail of it,” she would reply lightly, “That possibly is because it has neither a head nor a tail.” We had seen little of him in recent years except when we encountered him at the Countess’s home. The Countess tolerated him because she found him amusing. He was a wonderful source of gossip about persons of note, and if she needed someone to complete a foursome for whist, or she merely wanted someone to chat with, Dempster was always available. He had nothing else to do.
The Countess greeted Sir Thomas with formal affection, gave me a friendly nod, and graciously permitted Lady Sara to present the artists. Then she turned to Sir Thomas and asked, “Did you really see that unfortunate man?”
“A murder victim is beyond feeling,” Sir Thomas said with a rueful grin. “I’m the unfortunate one. Lady Sara routed me out at sunrise and hauled me off to a makeshift mortuary down by the docks. Yes, my lady, I saw him.”
“Was he really clawed by an animal?” the countess asked breathlessly.
“He undoubtedly was clawed. I should have said ‘by an animal,’ but I’ve suspended judgment because Lady Sara has promised to show me otherwise. We can’t start until Chief Inspector Mewer gets here.”
“Police officers,” the Countess said scornfully, “are never on time and never where they are needed.” She turned to me. “Did you see him, Colin?”
“The murder victim? I saw him last night, my lady.”
“What did he look like?”
“Like someone had fed part of him into a sausage machine,” I said.
She uttered a peal of laughter. “Dear Colin. He always has the right word.”
“He wasn’t pretty,” I said defensively.
“You can’t expect a corpse to be pretty. It is totally incapable of presenting its best profile, or rearranging its clothing to advantage, or striking a pose, or doing any of the silly things people are always doing to improve their appearances. This one sounds deliciously gruesome. Will you join me for tea, Sir Thomas?”
“No, thank you, Lady Ranisford. I must get back to my neglected work as soon as we deal with the Chief Inspector. Lady Sara would never admit it, but her patient, being dead, could have waited. My patients, being alive, have to be kept that way.”
“Lord Anstee is coming,” Lady Sara said. “You may be able to persuade him to stay for tea.”
The Countess stared at her. “Why would he be coming to town at this time of year? He hates London after the Season is over.”
“I asked him to come,” Lady Sara said.
Reggie Dempster was taking everything in with open mouth. Casual descriptions of hideously-mutilated corpses were obviously not his cup of tea, but he was coping as best he could. His mouth opened wider when the next guests arrived. The first was Chief Inspector Mewer, but his entrance went almost unnoticed because Lord Anstee, mutton chop whiskers fluttering, dashed in right behind him.
“Sorry
