The Scandal At Bletchley (Hilary Manningham-Butler Book 1) Page 4

  ‘Actually, Sinclair won every game,’ the Colonel pointed out.

  Lettie frowned. ‘Didn’t act like he’d won.’

  Professor Singh, fresh from his triumph on the piano, was oblivious to the confusion. ‘It looks to have been a most stimulating contest,’ he observed.

  Felicity Mandeville Jones stretched her arms above her head. ‘But jolly tiring, I must say. I thought I had him at the end there.’

  Her words were fooling nobody. She had thrown the game and everyone knew it.

  The Colonel adjusted his monocle. He was far too polite to say anything. ‘Yes, off to bed, everyone,’ he agreed. ‘Don’t want to miss all the fun tomorrow. Ha ha! We’ve organised a treasure hunt for the morning. Ten o’clock sharp.’

  I gritted my teeth. I’d had just about as much fun as I could manage already. Fifteen guineas lost in one evening. And I would probably lose another fifteen tomorrow.

  I was in a prickly mood as I prepared for bed in the early hours of the morning. Hargreaves had retired early, so I was forced to undress myself, although he had at least laid out my nightshirt on the four-poster bed. It had been a long and rather frustrating day and I was looking forward to a protracted period of unconsciousness. I changed quickly, keeping my bandages in place underneath the shirt, just to be on the safe side. If a fire alarm was called during the night, I didn’t want my bits jiggling about in front of the servants.

  The guest room they had given me was serviceable, though it suffered from the same tasteless clash of styles as the rest of the house, aspiring to substance but never quite achieving it. The place was also rather chilly. A cast iron fireplace on one side might have provided some warmth, had anyone thought to light it. But luckily, there were plenty of blankets on the bed.

  I wandered over to the window to look out across the estate. The room was south facing, overlooking the rose garden, a pleasant lawn studded with circular flowerbeds. It was the sort of view you expected from the front of a house rather than the side. Bletchley Park had that feel about it. Nothing was quite as it seemed.

  A pathway ran along the edge of the building and, looking down, I caught sight of Professor Singh, lighting up his pipe. Great puffs of smoke were already wafting up into the air. Another fellow was standing to his right, a plump little man, with his own small pipe. This was the foreigner Professor Singh had been speaking to before dinner; the doctor. He was a Frenchman, judging by his accent. Or possibly Belgian. There was something oddly familiar about him. I still hadn’t caught his name. Why the two of them were up and about at this hour, I had no idea. Perhaps they were just having a quick smoke before bedtime. Or maybe the doctor had asked the professor some arcane philosophical question and Singh was still giving his reply.

  The doctor was pointing to the steeple of St Mary’s Church, visible now through the trees only in silhouette, set against the moonlit sky. Perhaps they were having a religious discussion. It wouldn’t have surprised me. I wondered idly if the professor was even a Christian.

  I pulled back from the window as the doctor swung his head round and looked upwards towards the house. I wasn’t sure if he had seen me. I swayed for a moment, a sudden dizziness threatening to overpower me. I had drunk quite a bit over dinner and it was beginning to have an effect. I steadied myself. Nature was starting to make her usual demands and there was no point going to bed without relieving at least some of the pressure on my overworked bladder. A chamber pot had been provided underneath the bed, but I have an aversion to using them and Bletchley Park did at least have the semblance of modern plumbing. There was a water closet at the far end of the corridor.

  I unlocked the door and made my way quietly along the landing and up a short flight of stairs. The sounds of snoring could be heard from at least one of the bedrooms to my left. Some lucky beggar was already in the arms of Morpheus. My money was on the Colonel. There was a man with a clean conscience. Surprising, really, given the nature of his job. I heard whispered voices coming from a second room as I passed it by and I wondered briefly if Harry had already reached “first base” with the Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones.

  My ablutions taken care of, I hurried back to my room but stopped halfway when I heard a cry and a sudden thump from one of the other bedrooms adjacent to my own. It had sounded like quite a hard thump. I hesitated for a moment. Probably none of my business, I thought. But better to be on the safe side.

  I knocked gently on the door.

  ‘Is everything all right in there?’ I kept my voice low, so as not to disturb the rest of the corridor. ‘I thought I heard a bump.’ Several seconds elapsed without a response. I knocked quietly a second time.

  There was a shuffling from within the room and a few seconds later the door opened and the Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones peered out through the crack. She was not yet dressed for bed, although her clothes did seem somewhat dishevelled.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, Miss Jones,’ I said. ‘I thought you might have had an accident. Are you all right?’

  There was a bright red mark on the side of her face.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I slipped and banged my head on the bedstead. It’s nothing. Terribly clumsy of me. But I’m fine.’

  I wasn’t sure I believed her, though I couldn’t very well call her a liar. ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ A shadow flitted behind her. There was somebody else in the room, but I couldn’t make out who. It was hardly any of my business. ‘Would you like me to send down for a glass of water?’

  ‘That’s terribly sweet of you, Sir Hilary, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.’ She smiled awkwardly. There were rings around her eyes and I felt sure she had been crying. ‘I’m just a little bit tired. All this exertion! Too much excitement for one evening.’

  ‘Yes. Damn shame, losing the game like that.’

  ‘And your five guineas too. Can you ever forgive me?’

  ‘I daresay I’ll manage. Well, if you’re sure everything is all right?’ She nodded. ‘Then I’ll bid you goodnight.’

  And with that, the door closed.

  I hovered for a moment on the landing, trying to make sense of what I had seen. A mark on her face and an unknown figure lurking in the background. There was only one conclusion to be drawn: there was a man in the bedroom of Felicity Mandeville Jones. The gossips had been wrong. She was clearly not as Honourable as everyone supposed. And after that last game of billiards, it was clear that the man in question was none other than Anthony Sinclair.

  How the daughter of a former cabinet minister had ended up entangled with such an unpleasant fellow I couldn’t begin to imagine. She didn’t seem the sort to sacrifice her reputation without good cause. And Sinclair, I knew, was a married man. Not that marital infidelity bothers me in the slightest. Many seemingly happy marriages are little more than shells – I speak from personal experience – and if people can get their pleasure elsewhere, good luck to them, I say. But no one could find any pleasure in the arms of a brute like Anthony Sinclair. The man was an unfeeling cad.

  I felt a pang of sympathy for Miss Jones. She wasn’t the first woman to fall for a blackguard and she wouldn’t be the last.

  That mark on the side of her face, though.

  If Sinclair had beaten her, then he was even more of a scoundrel than I had first supposed. I cannot abide violence against women. It shows a profound weakness of character. Part of me was inclined to break down the door and give the fellow a good thrashing. But if Felicity Mandeville Jones had chosen to get involved with a man like that, it was not my place to interfere. And in any case, there was a real possibility that I would be the one that would receive the thrashing. Knowing my luck, Sinclair would turn out to be an amateur boxing champion. No, sad as it was, I would have to leave well alone. Whatever mistakes the Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones had made, she would just have to suffer the consequences.

  There was one crumb of comfort, though, as I made my way back to the cold darkness of the bedroom, locking my door carefully beh
ind me as I had done every night since I was a child.

  At least now I was sure Harry Latimer would lose his bet.

  Chapter Four

  The treasure hunt the following morning was the kind of enforced jollity that any sane person would do their uttermost to avoid. The Colonel had done his best to spice things up – daringly splitting the guests into mixed couples as we followed a series of cryptic clues – but on a cold October morning, with drizzle in the air, an extended tour of the estate, even in the name of entertainment, was the last thing anyone needed.

  I was not the only one with a shocking hangover. Arriving at the breakfast table, I was confronted by a scene of abject horror that would not have disgraced the Somme. Lifeless eyes were staring mindlessly in every direction. Felicity Mandeville Jones did not appear at all, though she sent her apologies, saying she was not feeling well. Only Harry and Professor Singh seemed unaffected by the indulgences of the previous evening. Harry could drink anybody under the table and the professor had made a small sherry last all night. The only satisfaction I could garner, as my head throbbed and my brain threatened to shatter the thin cradle of bone holding my skull in place, was that Sinclair – who had arrived unpardonably late at the table – had been paired off for the morning with the terminally tedious Dorothy Kilbride. The fascist and the dull widow. It could not have worked out better.

  The mixing of couples was organised with scrupulous precision. Lots had been drawn and when the one married couple who had been invited for the weekend somehow managed to end up together, chance rather than planning was to blame.

  Mr and Mrs Smith accepted their fate with good grace. They were a strange, ill-matched couple. He was a bluff northerner in his fifties, she a hoity-toity home counties girl, adept at looking down her nose at everyone. The Colonel had introduced us the previous evening and insisted that they really were called Mr and Mrs Smith. ‘If I wanted to manufacture an alias,’ he told us, ‘I’d have come up with something a bit more imaginative than that. Ha ha!’ It would not have sounded so improbable if one of them had been called Ariadne or Ethelbert, but no, it was plain old John and Mary Smith. It was rare to find a married couple in the Security Service (relationships were frowned upon, for very good reasons) but they had met and fallen in love – goodness knows why – and nature had taken its course.

  Sir Vincent was in charge of the morning’s entertainment, which happily for him meant he would not be participating in any of it. Lady Fanny Leon had graciously consented to be involved, however. She had drawn a name from the hat just like all the other women and had shown the appropriate amount of pleasure on discovering she had been paired off with Professor Singh.

  ‘It will be a most enjoyable game,’ the academic assured her, with a beam of pride.

  ‘I am sure it will,’ Lady Fanny agreed.

  As for me, I had to make do with the irksome Lettie Young, the “much loved music hall star”. ‘I hope you’ve got a brain,’ she declared, scanning the type-written sheet the Colonel had handed out to each of the teams. ‘’Cos I ain’t got a bleedin’ clue.’

  We gathered on the roundabout at the front of the house to begin our quest. The sky was somewhat cloudy, though sadly there was little prospect of precipitation bringing a premature end to our activities. We would just have to see the game through to its conclusion.

  Hargreaves was trying to attract my attraction from the doorway but I waved him away. If I had to take part in this game, it was better simply to get on with it.

  A set of clues had been typed out, leading to a variety of locations across the estate. Letters would be collected from each site and gradually a word would be revealed. That would tell us the location of the treasure and the first one to grab it would be the winner. It was a convoluted and rather silly game, but fully in keeping with the finest traditions of the British civil service. I could just imagine some dullard at Queen’s Gate chuckling to himself as he thought it all up. I only hoped the prize was something decent. A bottle of whisky, perhaps.

  ‘That American friend of yours is a bit of a charmer, ain’t he?’ Lettie Young said, as we set off in search of the first letter. ‘Where’s he hiding this morning? He disappeared pretty sharpish after breakfast.’

  ‘He had an errand to run,’ I admitted, tightly.

  Harry was no fool. He had no more desire to criss-cross the grounds of Bletchley Park on a cold October morning than I did. ‘I need to borrow your car,’ he had announced, bold as brass, over the breakfast table. Typical Harry. ‘I’ve got a bit of business I need to take care of.’

  If it had been anyone else, I would have given them short shrift. But Harry could be very persuasive and he had done me quite a few favours over the years. Reluctantly, I’d lent him the keys. Hargreaves had offered to drive him too, but I drew the line at that. Let him find his own damn chauffeur.

  Harry was probably meeting up with some dubious contact and the less I knew about it the better. Maybe he was delivering that holdall I had brought up with me from London. I didn’t much care. He had promised to be back in time for lunch, which was all that mattered; at which point he would doubtless resume his attempts to deflower the Honourable Felicity Mandeville Jones. He was wasting his time there, of course. The man from the Daily Mail had already beaten him to it. And I doubted Anthony Sinclair would appreciate a rival.

  Lettie Young seemed rather taken with Harry. If he had put his money on her, he might have had some chance. Lettie was a “home run” girl if ever I met one. She was dressed in a heavy outdoor coat, with thick gloves and a brightly coloured cloche hat against the cold. Her figure was washboard thin. Whether she was actually that shape or was enduring the fashionable contortions of the age was impossible to guess. I had some sympathy. Although I have always been modestly proportioned, it still takes some effort to disguise my true shape. A couple of coins and a length of bandage were usually sufficient to flatten it all down. It was either that or the Symington Side Lacer, a reinforced bodice all the bright young things were using to disguise their bosom and achieve that fashionable boyish silhouette.

  ‘You want to be careful with Harry,’ I warned. ‘He’s not exactly a gentleman.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t exactly a lady.’ She laughed. ‘Don’t you worry, love. I can handle myself. I’ve been married twice already.’

  ‘Good grief. But you can’t be a day over twenty-five.’

  She grinned ‘They do things differently in the theatre.’

  That much was evident.

  ‘Are you...divorced?’ I asked incredulously. It was bad enough that a woman of her class had been invited to be part of this weekend at all, but a divorcee. What was the Colonel thinking of? I know everyone gets divorced these days, but you must understand – back in the 1920s a divorced woman was about as disreputable as you could get. It smacked of infidelity and it was felt – rightly or wrongly – that there was something just plain wrong with a woman who was unable to keep her husband. The fact that some husbands were of the order of Anthony Sinclair never really seemed to register at the time.

  ‘Divorced and widowed.’ She laughed. ‘On the lookout for number three, so you’d better beware!’

  ‘I’m already married,’ I told her firmly. And had I not been, Lettie Young would have been the last person on my list of potential fiancées.

  ‘I know. I’m only teasing. So what was that clue again?’

  I glanced down at the piece of paper in my hand. I was finding it difficult to develop any interest in the game. There hadn’t been time to organise a sweepstake. ‘“It grows like wheat but puzzles the mind.”’ The answer was obvious.

  Lettie wiped her nose with a glove. ‘Nope. No idea.’

  I sighed. ‘It’s “maze”.’ Still she didn’t understand. ‘“Maize” the crop and “Maze” the puzzle.’

  ‘Oh, I get you. That is clever. They got a maze here then?’

  ‘So I’ve been told.’ In fact, the entrance to the maze was only a couple of hundred yards fro
m the front of the house.

  Lettie grabbed my arm. ‘Well, then, lover boy. Let’s go and get lost.’

  A succession of clues led us back and forth across the grounds in a frustratingly unpredictable manner. It was not a large estate – acres rather than miles – but there were plenty of awkward nooks and crannies to confuse the unwary. I was puffing with the exertion of it all. Each stop on the treasure hunt provided us with a single letter of the alphabet – thankfully we didn’t have to go into the maze to find the first one, or we might have been there all day – and gradually the location of the treasure would be revealed. There were seven clues in all and the first three letters were B, R & Y. ‘It’s going to be “LIBRARY”,’ I guessed, with some confidence.

  Lettie laughed. ‘God, you ain’t half clever. They should take you on full time.’

  ‘How on earth did you get involved with all this?’ I asked, my hand gesturing vaguely in the air. ‘With the Colonel, I mean?’ The question sounded less polite out loud than it had when it had first formed in my head. But it was still worth asking. How had a music hall star ever managed to get mixed up with MI5?

  ‘Ooh, wouldn’t you like to know!’ She grinned. ‘No shop talk, didn’t you hear the Colonel?’

  I nodded. ‘Quite right.’

  On reflection, it probably wasn’t so odd. Information was the lifeblood of intelligence work and Lettie was a professional entertainer. Travelling up and down the country, from theatre to theatre, she would doubtless come into contact with a wide variety of people. It was the perfect way to gather information, especially for someone with the common touch. And Lettie Young certainly had that.

  I glanced down at the clue sheet. One more letter should do it, I thought, just to confirm “library” really was that all-important final word.

  The next clue directed us to a yard on the far side of the mansion. A long row of stables fringed the back of a rudimentary square and a stable boy stood smirking beside a set of large wooden doors. We passed inside and made our way along the rustic stalls. The smell of straw and animals, even in the cold, made my nose turn up. Several large horses stood passively watching us as we made our way to the far end. I regarded them suspiciously. I can ride well enough, but I have never been much of a one for the country. Lettie Young, surprisingly, was in her element.