The Wellington Bureau
A Quartermain Mystery
Daphne Coleridge
Copyright © Daphne Coleridge 2015
One
Lady Quartermain was in the garden cutting the heads off some overblown pink roses when her stepson found her. He cleared his throat in an obvious attempt to attract her attention, but she kept her head bent over the flowers, her dark hair concealing her face from him. She wore a beige raincoat which was several sizes too big and unbuttoned, so that it billowed in the wind. Her hands were protected from thorns by a pair of muddy gardening gloves. In contrast, an elegant blue and white silk dress was occasionally revealed beneath the flapping coat.
“The carnations have fallen flat on their faces, poor dears. It’s the wind,” she commented at last. “And the sweet-peas have gone gangly.”
The young man shuffled. “I say, they’re all here, you know!”
“They make such a mess!” exclaimed the lady, as she knelt down in the mud and started to pick up the pink petals. “Like confetti.”
“Douglas has given them sherry.”
Lady Quartermain stood up and looked about her. She gave a deep sigh. “If only the wind would drop.”
“Are you coming?”
She looked at the tall youth with his blond hair dropping over one eye and his immaculate, if rather dandyish clothes, as if noticing his presence for the first time. “Andrew always hated visitors!” She said with indignation.
“Damned press!” exclaimed Brigadier Harris Butterworth.
“Local?” enquired the dandyish young man, slumping down into at settee and slopping a quantity of whisky and soda out of an over-full glass.
The Brigadier nodded, but his eyes and attention had already turned to Lady Quartermain who was standing with her back to them, surveying the wind-swept garden.
“Are you all right, my dear?” he said gently.
The shoulders shrugged, but there was no reply. A tap on the door forestalled any further enquiries. The man who entered was a tall, sallow complexioned man with a long face and lugubrious expression.
“Will her ladyship require anything further?” he asked.
The Brigadier shook his head and the man faded quietly from the room, the door closing softly behind him.
“What are you planning to do then, Anna?” The young man took a swig of his whisky, not noticing the warning frown directed at him by the Brigadier. “I mean, you can stay here as long as you like. After all, it is your home even if...”
“Don’t be such a damned idiot, Toby!” said the Brigadier crossly.
“All I mean is,” the youth rattled on in a slightly slurred and rather exaggeratedly upper-class accent, “that I’d like Anna to stay here. I won’t be here often. I know how she hates people. I’ll give her plenty of warning when I’m bringing friends and she can clear out until we’ve gone.”
“You really are thunderously tactless!” Anna turned to face the two men, and the Brigadier was relieved to see that the corners of her mouth had twitched into a slight smile.
“Am I? I s’pose I am!” replied Toby with a momentary frown. “But I just wanted you to know that you were welcome.” His smile expressed genuine good humour and Anna could only smile back.
“Will you stay here? Or would you like to get away?” The Brigadier was more cautious in his enquiries, but at the same time he was a great believer in action as a cure for all ills, physical or mental. The idea of leaving the bereaved Lady Quartermain with nothing but melancholy thoughts to occupy her, despite her professed preference for solitude, concerned him. After all, she had just lost her husband and the child she had looked after as her own, in tragic circumstances, as that wretched journalist had kept saying. She was so young. Twenty-five, was it? No older than that tactless buffoon Toby. But she had never really had a life of her own before Andrew. She had nothing to go back to. And she was such a damned odd girl. Not surprising, after living in virtual isolation with a rum devil like Viscount Quartermain. Being on her own now in the big, empty house would do her no good at all. Douglas was no companion for a young girl, and he had always thought Andrew’s gardener was quite as odd as his son. The sooner she found some sort of occupation the better, as far as the Brigadier was concerned. He was prepared to bully her into action if need be. He did not think a decent interval of mourning was called for in this case. After all, once she had started to mourn why should she stop? It would have been different if the little girl had lived. Then there would have been some reason for her to come to terms with her grief as quickly as possible. But with her dead too...
Anna went and poured herself a drink from a heavy decanter and then topped-up the glass that Toby waved at her.
“You are both leaving tomorrow?”
“Got a job to do,” said Toby, with a resignation that might, in other company, have concealed the fact that his work was more of a pastime than a means of earning a living.
“I could stay for another day if you would like me to,” said the Brigadier.
Anna shook her head. “I’d be poor company. I’ll probably tidy up the garden. Everything’s gone wild. Poor Jack has had his usual bout of summer flu and Sam does more harm than good without his father to keep a watchful eye on him.” She returned to her station by the window.
“Father loved the garden! Never could see the sense in it myself. Can’t tell a rose from a weed unless I prick my finger on it. That and stuffy old books. How did you put up with him?”
Anna made no reply.
“Wasn’t he breeding some special sort of a rose or some such nonsense?”
Anna turned and spoke in a slightly unsteady voice. “I’d rather not...not talk about it just now.”
Seeing that she was genuinely upset, Toby sat up, suddenly sobered. “I say! I am sorry! I just thought it might help to talk.”
“Not to worry.”
“Would you rather I shut up?”
“No. Not really. I’m being silly.”But despite her protestation a silence fell on the trio until she spoke again herself. “It isn’t Andrew. He wouldn’t have minded for himself. It’s poor little Emma. It’s just.... such a waste.”
It was Toby, and not the more tactful but also more restrained Brigadier, who leapt to his feet and gave his stepmother a hug just when she looked as if she might cry.
Anna sat on the edge of her bed, the curtains open, quite unable to compose herself for sleep. There was a scratching at the door and she went over to open it. Wellington, an ageing retriever, padded in and started to lick her hand. She smiled, thinking how strange and nice it was that a dog could be so sensitive to her feelings. It was as if he knew that she wanted company, but not the enquiring, questioning company of humans. Still, she was glad that the Brigadier and Toby had been there for the funeral. They were probably the only two people whose presence she could have tolerated. The Brigadier, dour and practical, and Toby, boisterous and insensitive; both equally, unexpectedly, kind and concerned.
The door had been left ajar, and it was not long before Victor and Soult took the opportunity of entering the usually forbidden chamber. The whole menagerie. Good. Anna let the two purring cats jump up onto the bed one after another. Why bother to stop them? She sat down on the edge and let Wellington settle with his wet nose on her feet. All three were part of the life she had loved. The life that had died with Viscount Quartermain in the burning wreck of his Morgan.
She let her mind wander back to their first meeting nearly five years before. She was halfway through her first term at university and was hating it. Perhaps it was because she was a couple of years older than most of the others in her year, but she was heartily fed up wit
h her fellows, all full of themselves, gushing and superficial; some self-consciously intellectual, some self-consciously non-intellectual. All wanting attention and no one prepared to pay attention. It was a place to feel lonely or to enter the fray and fight for your share of the limelight. Anna felt lonely.
Her professor had asked, or been bullied into asking, an old school friend to give a lecture to the history society. The usual clutch of genuine enthusiasts turned up for the extra-curricular talk, less than usual, because no one had heard of Andrew Quartermain. His subject was the Peninsular Wars, and he seemed to speak for his own pleasure, largely oblivious of the small, fidgeting audience. Had they all got up and crept out one by one he would have carried on with equal relish, or so Anna thought to herself at the time. He was not a good speaker. His humour and evident knowledge of the subject might have recommended him, but his stutter and his inability to follow any point through to a conclusion was his undoing.
It was customary for members of the society to take visiting speakers to the bar for a drink. The professor accompanied them on this occasion, but was called away at the crucial moment, leaving the students to entertain their unprepossessing guest. He accepted a beer and sucked on the end of an empty pipe, but proved as uncommunicative away from the lecture theatre as he had been voluble within it. All polite overtures received a cursory monosyllable by way of reply, and