Lord Foxbridge Butts In Read online

  Prepared for a solitary meal in the august dining room, reveling alone in the airy Georgian grandeur of that most venerable club, I was delighted to instead run into a good friend from Oxford, Bunny Vavasor.

  I never knew how the moniker ‘Bunny’ had come to be applied, as we’d gone to different schools, and he made a dire secret of it. The Hon. Frederick Vavasor, son and heir to the sixth Baron Reedham, was nothing like a rabbit — he was so much more bovine than leporine: a big beefy chap, handsome but not dazzling, gazing placidly at the world through trusting brown eyes and moving with the plodding nonchalance of a contented Guernsey; he was sweet and lazy, not stupid so much as he was blithely uninterested in anything that did not relate directly to his own comforts and pleasures.

  “Well, Foxy Saint-Clair, as I live and breathe!” Bunny strode slowly across the lofty central hall with this hand out.

  “Bunny! How’s the lad?” I took his hand in a hearty shake, refraining just in time from kissing him on both cheeks, as we would have done in another sort of place. Bunny and I had been members of the same dining club at Magdalen, which I had joined for no other reason than that I was fatally in love with its president, and hoped that getting drunk with him might lead to other possibilities. Bunny was in love with the same man, who sadly held his liquor with remarkable dignity, and we ended up fast friends after discovering our shared tastes.

  “Coming along nicely, thanks,” he said, moving to my side and gesturing to another young man who’d been standing behind him, “I want you to meet my old school chum, Sir Oliver Paget. Sebastian Saint-Clair, Viscount Foxbridge.”

  Sir Oliver Paget, Bart., was an extremely good-looking chap, with waving honey-gold hair and darting amber eyes softened by extremely long lashes, the clear-cut profile of a Roman statue with an athletic figure to match. Within the next few minutes, as we went in to lunch together and settled ourselves at a table, I learned that ‘Twister’ (we were on a school-name basis before the soup was gone) had been a prefect at Harrow, where Bunny had fagged for him; he’d gone on to Cambridge and earned a degree in physical sciences, along with various fellowships and scholarships. Bunny plainly worshiped him, and also intimated through arcane gestures and veiled references that Twister was ‘one of our sort,’ which substantially increased my interest in this Old Harrovian.

  “You’ll never guess what Twister does, Foxy,” Bunny leaned over confidentially when we’d reached the cheese and fruit stage of our meal.

  “Does?” I wondered. People one meets in Brooks’s don’t do things, they have things. But then, Twister wasn’t a member of Brooks’s, he was there as Bunny’s guest.

  “For work, I mean,” Bunny prompted, “Try and guess.”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” I admitted after a moment’s consideration. Twister looked the sort of fellow who could do absolutely anything he set his mind to: he might be a politician or an engineer, a hairdresser or a cook for all I could tell.

  “He’s a rozzer!” Bunny hissed gleefully, “A bluebottle, a busy, a copper! Could you just die?”

  “I could,” I admitted, admiringly, envisioning this golden Apollo in a snappy blue uniform.

  “I’m not exactly a constable on the beat, Bunny,” Twister reproved his friend gently, reaching into his pocket to pull out a calling-card, “I’m with the Metropolitan Police.”

  “Golly! That is impressive,” I found myself even more interested in Twister as I perused his card, ‘Sergeant Oliver Paget’ (no Sir or Bart.) above a telephone number and office designation at New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment; admiration was quickly developing into something more — at least a good schoolboy crush, perhaps the seed of a grand passion.

  “Not really,” he shrugged off the compliment, “I’m just a chief-inspector’s dogsbody. But it is a good occupation with a future, it’s interesting and keeps me busy.”

  “Well, it’s certainly more than I could do,” I insisted.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Twister gave me a look that I couldn’t quite identify, somewhere between a smoulder and a twinkle, “I’ve heard about you, you know. I was in Oxford on a case two years ago when you helped catch that don who was burgling the students’ rooms.”

  “How mortifying! I’m known to the police, Bunny!” I joked. Twister wasn’t the only one anxious to shrug off admiration. The chivalric code forbids crowing over one’s own accomplishments — one has to hire bards for that.

  “You might consider the Yard as a career, yourself, Foxy,” Twister persisted.

  “Pater would kick at that, wouldn’t he?” I laughed, but the idea had caught hold of my imagination, presenting tantalizing possibilities but also sobering impossibilities, “I don’t think one can be a peer and a policeman at the same time. If my father didn’t murder me, the Press would roast me alive.”

  “Besides,” Bunny put in, “Foxy’s career is already taped out for him. He’ll be a big cheese in Parliament one day.”

  “Bunny, don’t remind me,” I shivered with revulsion. It isn’t actually compulsory that I take my seat in the Lords, fewer and fewer peers were doing it every day; but though I was intent on shirking responsibility for as long as I could, I also intended to toe the line when my time came. The Earls of Vere have always been involved in the highest spheres of government, and I couldn’t shrug off three centuries of tradition out of sheer laziness.

  “Perhaps that’s better,” Twister looked at me appraisingly, thoughtfully, “You could do something important in politics. You could be a Great Reformer.”

  “Lords never reform anything, we’ve too vested an interest in things staying the same.”

  “You could be the first,” Twister insisted, fixing me with an earnest gaze.

  “We’re getting far too serious, gentlemen,” Bunny pronounced as gravely as a physician shaking his head over a hopeless case as he rose from the table, “I suggest we adjourn to the bar and treat the malady with a few cocktails before we become altogether elderly.”

  We reverted to our jolly schoolboy mood as soon as we moved to the bar, where we got a bit squiffy on repeat orders of a newly-invented cocktail, the recipe for which Bunny had learned from a fellow at the latest Soho nightclub and taught to Brooks’s barman. I don’t recall the name of the mixture, but it contained several different kinds of alcohol and tasted oddly like pink-sugar humbugs.

  When we reached the point where we’d either have to stop drinking or go somewhere less august to get properly soaked, Bunny elected to give it up, thinking he’d better run upstairs and sleep it off before dressing for dinner (he was staying at Brooks’s until his new flat in Albemarle Street would be ready). I offered to escort Twister home, and he and I came downstairs together, where I asked the porter to get us a cab.

  “You don’t have a car?” Twister looked at me with surprise when the porter scurried outside.

  “Not yet,” I responded, “And I may just stick to cabs after all. So much less bother.”

  “Then why are you offering to take me home? I could’ve called a cab on my own.”

  “I think you know why,” I answered, lowering my eyes and then peeking up at him through my lashes, one of my most potent come-hither glances.

  “Look, Foxy,” Twister laid his hand on my shoulder in a thoroughly avuncular manner, which was as close to the effect of a cold shower as could be managed in a public place, “You’re a very attractive boy, but I’m a policeman. Even if I wasn’t queer, I’d have to be incredibly careful about my associates. I don’t know you well enough yet to invite you to my rooms.”

  “Will you allow me to get to know you better?” I asked, turning up the seductive tone a notch or two.

  “Instinct tells me you’re going to get me into a lot of trouble,” he sighed, shaking his head.

  “But you’re not saying ‘No,’” I grinned at him as the cab crept up to the kerb outside and stopped, “I’ll invite you to dinner, with Bunny as chaperon, perhaps another like-minded friend or two for company
. I’ll wear you down, just you wait.”

  “I’m in the book,” he said over his shoulder, “Ring me up and we’ll see. Cheerio!”

  “Toodle-pip,” I replied, adopting a thoughtful stance as I watched the black taxicab carry him away to parts unknown. I wanted him more than anyone I’d ever wanted before, and I was much accustomed to getting what I wanted. But a police detective with a reputation to guard was a tricky proposition, and I’d have to proceed with great care.

  Returning to the Hyacinth, I stopped into the library on the ground floor to consult Debrett’s Baronetage and see what I could learn about Twister. But his entry contained little I didn’t already know, only adding the nugget that he was the fifteenth baronet of his line (indicating that either the title was very old or that it ran through incumbents at an alarming rate) and giving his addresses as Holmesham Manor in Cheshire and 12B Craven Street, SW1. It did not list his profession, and he belonged to no clubs.

  He of course was referring to the other ‘book’ when he told me to ring him, so I looked him out in the telephone directory, jotting the number on the back of the card he’d given me.

  With a great deal to think about, I wandered into the bar upstairs, which occupied an alcove at the inside end of the lounge — the effect of Bunny’s newfangled cocktails was wearing off too fast, and I needed to let myself down a little more gently, so ordered a large brandy and soda, settling into an armchair for a good long think.

  As I sat lost in thought, the room started to fill up with guests, and a waiter emerged to make his rounds; I ordered another b.ands. when he came my way, and put off the rest of my thinking for another time. With a start, I realized that someone was sitting right next to me — I hadn’t heard him nor seen him until I’d ordered my drink.

  “Hullo!” I greeted the man with delighted surprise.

  “Hello, yourself,” he replied, smirking at me in a way that I felt from my eyes to my toes, and all points between. He was a very handsome gentleman, American by his accent and dress, about forty and quite distinguished with salt-and-pepper hair and a bronzed skin.

  “Viscount Foxbridge,” I introduced myself, sticking my hand out over the arms of our separate chairs.

  “Morris Pollitt,” he shook my hand in a manly grip that went soft and caressing halfway through, “And what’s your real name, Viscount?”

  “You want the whole thing, or the pocket version?”

  “Surprise me,” he purred. Actually purred, like a jungle cat.

  “Sebastian Albert Savarell Saint-Clair, Viscount Foxbridge by courtesy. But you can call me Foxy.”

  “Quite a mouthful,” he remarked, quirking an eyebrow at me. The man was absolutely seductive.

  “So I’ve been told,” I quirked an eyebrow right back.

  “How come I haven’t met you before, Foxy? I’ve been here over a month.”

  “I just arrived this morning. Are you making a long stay?”

  “I leave first thing tomorrow,” he said wistfully, looking at my mouth rather than my eyes, “Ships that pass in the night, as they say.”

  “It’s not night yet,” I reached out and laid my hand on his wrist, caressing the back of his hand with my thumb. I’d nearly forgotten that I wasn’t at Brooks’s, I was at Hyacinth House, and nobody would bat an eye at a little display of the courting dance among men.

  “Would you join me for dinner?” he smiled a smile of victory, knowing then that he had me.

  “Dinner’s not for hours and hours,” I stood up and nodded at the door, “Why don’t I join you now?”

  “Say, you’re not one of those fast boys, are you?” he laughed, standing up so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face with the last word.

  “Only at first,” I assured him, “I slow down after the first lap. I’d love to see your room.”

  But this isn’t going to be that kind of story, so I shall leave you here in the lounge while I privately remember the very festive afternoon, evening, and night that followed. I’ll just say that a good time was had by all, and move along to the next chapter.

  *****

  The Mystery of the Prancing Pole

  I woke up rather disoriented, my groggy brain scrambling to remember where I was; though I’m not entirely unaccustomed to waking up in strange beds, that first moment of opening one’s eyes on an unfamiliar vista is always a bit of a jar.

  But once I realized that I was in my own bed, in my own room, in my own very grown-up hotel suite, I was filled with a smug kind of joy. It was my first whole night in this new room, having spent the one night with the American chap and not returning to my own rooms until he’d departed for the boat train, when I dashed down some breakfast and took a nap on the sofa before setting out to explore the town; the next night was spent at a hotel in Prince Albert Road with another new friend, whom I met in the Zoological Gardens at Regent’s Park.

  It was barely two minutes after I opened my eyes that Pond drifted into the room with a cup and saucer on a silver tray. His frantic behavior of two days before was gone now that we were settled in, and his demeanor was so serene and quiet, like a carp floating about in an ornamental pool, that I found it restful just to have him in the room with me.

  “Will you be breakfasting in bed, my lord?” he asked as he handed me a cup of hot black coffee.

  I’d become addicted to the stuff some years back, and could no longer bear tea in the morning — it was just too mild, and I needed the jolt that shakes off the cobwebs of sleep one only gets from strong coffee. It made me a little unpopular with hostesses, creating more work for their servants when I stayed with them, and my scout at Oxford flatly refused to have anything to do with the stuff; so I bought myself a wonderful German electric coffee-pot and brewed my own coffee in my room. Pond had not been thrilled when I showed him how the machine worked, but he’d accepted this quirk in my habits with good grace and had mastered the precise ratio of ground beans to fresh water without difficulty.

  “No, I think I’ll get up,” I wriggled backward to lean against the pillows before taking the cup, “But I won’t get dressed yet. I’ll have my breakfast in the sitting-room.”

  “Very good, my lord,” he replied, floating back out of the room after laying my dressing gown across the foot of my bed.

  I didn’t generally sleep in pajamas, especially in the summer, and had kicked off most of the covers in the night; I had little reserve about being unclothed around other men, but was mostly accustomed to the other men being unclothed as well — being the only exposed person in a given situation makes one feel rather an ass. But in just three days I’d become so accustomed to Pond’s presence that I didn’t really notice the difference in our states of dress: it was wonderfully like being alone, but with the things I needed magically appearing whenever I needed them.

  Nevertheless, I did put on my dressing-gown before venturing forth into the sitting-room. Being nude in a bedroom or a bathroom is one thing, no different than being nude in a Turkish bath or a secluded lake; but being nude in a sitting-room is simply uncivilized. Besides, my dressing gown was a thing of sumptuous beauty, lilac watered silk on the outside and mulberry peau de soie on the inside, with silver cord piping and my family crest embroidered in silver thread over the left breast — it would be a crime to not wear it.

  I was a little taken aback that my lovely chromium coffee-pot was not on the table; Pond considered it too utilitarian an article for a gentleman’s sitting-room, I suppose, and had decanted the needful brew into a silver pot with a candle underneath to keep it hot. It was a much nicer piece of silver than one usually sees in hotels and restaurants, elegantly unembellished and of impressive quality, as was the silver box which Pond had filled with my cigarettes. The ivory porcelain cup and saucer, now that I came to notice them, were awfully pretty, too: eggshell-thin and rimmed in gold.

  “Pond?” I asked when he returned a few minutes later with my breakfast tray, “Is this the hotel’s silver? It’s awfully nice.”
/>   “This is your lordship’s silver,” Pond set the tray down on a sideboard and began transferring the plates and glasses onto the table, where a charger, flatware, and napery were already laid out, “The hotel’s servingware was not up to an appropriate standard.”

  “I have my own silver? Since when?”

  “I took the liberty of purchasing the necessary items yesterday afternoon, when I discovered that the hotel had nothing better than what was sent up with yesterday’s breakfast.”

  “But where did it come from?” I pursued, lifting my cup and saucer over my head so I could read the Royal Worcester mark on the bottom.

  “I purchased everything at Asprey in Bond Street, my lord,” Pond made miniscule adjustments to the placement of plates and forks until everything was arranged to his satisfaction, “I opened an account on your lordship’s behalf with the letter of credit you provided me for household expenses. If you wish, I can exchange the pieces.”

  “Asprey!” I goggled at the riches laid before me, bought from His Majesty’s own jewelers and silversmiths, “We are grand, aren’t we?”

  “Is your lordship displeased with the purchase?” Pond asked me with a note of asperity in his voice.

  “No, not at all,” I hastened to correct the misapprehension, “I’m deeply impressed. We don’t even have this nice of silver at Foxbridge. Aunt Emily would be pea-green with envy!”

  “I am glad your lordship is pleased,” Pond allowed himself the tiniest glimmer of a smile as he bowed his way out of the Presence.

  “Thrilled, more like,” I said to myself, then lifted the opulent silver cover off of my opulent gilt-edged plate to reveal a brace of poached eggs on toast with a rasher of bacon, “I really am a millionaire, aren’t I? This is going to be such fun.”

  I demolished my breakfast in short order, then poured myself a third cup of coffee and lit a cigarette, putting my feet up on the other chair and reveling in my new surroundings. I read the morning paper, or rather glanced over its columns until some-thing might catch my eye; but nothing did, so I got up and went over to the window, opening it wide and leaning out to see what my little square of sky was looking like.