The Wellington Bureau: A Quartermain Mystery Read online

Brigadier Butterworth.”

  “Jolly good. Well, Douglas, I really think I’m glad to be back!” Anna looked out of the broad window of the drawing room at the wide sweep of lawn, stained gold by the clusters of daffodils which grew freely up the slope which led to the walled gardens. She observed Bill and Ben making their way to the house from the old coach house. “I’ll introduce you to the twins,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll find that they make themselves quite useful.”

  Douglas pursed his lips but made no comment. He was duly introduced to the twins as Mr Ackroyd, and it was agreed that they would be sent to see what help he required after Anna had shown them something of the house. She had intended to travel to Q House that evening with Toby, but the twins had been so keen to see a “really posh house” that Anna had decided that she would take her own car and arrive in the afternoon, so as to have some time to herself before Toby and his friends arrived.

  “He’s a bit of a stuffed shirt!” exclaimed Ben after Douglas Ackroyd had taken his dignified leave.

  “A what?” asked Anna, to whom the expression was quite new.

  “A stuffed shirt. A bit stiff. Stuck up.” The twins giggled at each other.

  “Douglas Ackroyd has been a fixture in this house for forty years,” Anna explained. “His father was batman to Andrew’s grandfather in the First World War.” This distinguished pedigree merely drew another giggle from the twins. It was the word “batman” that entertained them. “Well,” said Anna, ignoring their mirth, “as far as I’m concerned this house is more his than it is mine. And you better jolly well do as he tells you! That was the condition we agreed on when you asked to come.”

  “Do we have to call you “your ladyship” like he does?”

  “No. Well, only when he is listening. There is no point in upsetting him. If you really can’t manage that without laughing you can call me madam, which will not offend his sense of propriety. And please, please, don’t play any of your pranks on him. I don’t mind what you do to Toby, so long as you at least call him "my lord" if Douglas is in the room. But I don’t want Douglas any more put out than he already has been by the threat of a sudden influx of guests.”

  In fact Anna was in for a surprise. Not only did the twins help Douglas and treat him with the respect that the venerable old butler deserved, but they actually took a liking to him and he to them. The secret behind this friendship was the wealth of interesting stories that Douglas Ackroyd had collected during his lifetime, but had little opportunity to recount. He had not thought it proper for him to mention them in front of the viscount and viscountess, nor even young Master Toby, and he had always held himself aloof from Jack Baldwin and his wife. The twins, however, were the perfect audience. Indeed, so fond did the twins become of him that they never once forgot to address Toby as "my lord", even if they often smiled broadly as they did so.

  Anna had time to visit Mary Baldwin in the gate lodge and to hunt down Jack and Sam, whom she found in the greenhouses. She even had a few moments of blissful but melancholy solitude in the rose garden. Then Toby and his friends arrived in convoy just after eight, and there were not so many as two minutes which Anna could call her own until they all retired to bed.

  Despite drinking a rather fine brandy as a nightcap, Anna found it difficult to sleep. Wellington, who had given her a rapturous welcome, had been permitted to enter the chamber and dozed happily by the dying embers of the fire. The room was unchanged and as spruce and fresh as if it had been occupied throughout the long cold winter. But Anna was not at peace. She felt as if she had led an army of intruders into the hallowed places that Andrew had guarded so carefully and so long. And she shuddered at the thought of how she had permitted Percy to flirt with her so outrageously at dinner. Yet at the same time she found herself completely unable to bring back Andrew in her mind as a vivid, vital memory. She had thought that she would recall him; the way he looked, spoke and moved, as clearly as if he had just wandered out to fetch some book from the library to read her a passage, as he had so often in the past. But the more she tried to revive her memories, the more she tried to raise the ghost of Andrew and greet him like the demon lover who still held her heart enthralled, the more she was conscious of the fact that her mind was blank. All that remained of Andrew was a faint disapproval of her permitting so many guests into his beloved Quartermain House.

  It was in the late afternoon, when the sun deigned to shine on Quartermain House and its beautiful gardens for the better part of an hour, that Anna took Percy to see the rose gardens. Of course he had seen them before, and of course it was too early for them to be in bloom, and of course it was the place dearest to her, dearest to Andrew. But it seemed churlish to refuse his request. He was, after all, Toby’s guest. His presence there was not her responsibility.

  The wall to the garden was high, a lovely mellow stone wall, in the summer months hung with heavy fragrant blooms. The garden, in blossom, was like a single multicoloured flower, each radiant bed a petal of velvety red, dappled pink, glossy yellow and gold; a sheltered haven, dizzy with warm perfume and lazy with the hum of bees. In spring it was cool and green, the early buds tight with promise.

  “This will be earliest. It’s a wild rose. All these up against this wall are wild. It comes out in yellow flowers: canaries. It should be out by the end of the month. But these; these are one of my favourites. I’m very traditional. I like red roses. These are a really deep red: Lilli Marlene. Andrew liked yellow roses. This has a lovely perfume. It’s called Korresia.” Anna introduced the flowers by name as if she were introducing friends. “And this Pink Perpetue. A lovely pink, not a pale washed-out pink, but a serious pink. That bed was newly planted last spring – a sudden impulse on Andrew’s part.”

  Percy allowed himself to be given a guided tour of the gardens.

  “Of course you should come in July. It is at its most lovely in July.”

  “I should like to. Very much.” Something in the tone of Percy’s voice made Anna uncomfortable.

  “Oh, well, you’ve done the tour. Perhaps we ought to find the others.”

  “Perhaps. But I have no wish to.”

  “Oh,” said Anna, a trifle awkwardly. “We can always take a look at the fuchsia garden. Not that there is much to see at the moment.”

  “No. Don’t run away. Let’s sit here a bit.”

  Anna sat unwillingly beside him. She just knew that he was going to kiss her or put a hand on her knee, or whatever young men like Percy did when they had cornered their prey. All that charming nonsense of the last evening must be some sort of ritual which led up to the passionate embrace or the lingering kiss, or whatever entree to romance was in vogue. She wondered if his heart was really in it, or if it was just a habit he could not break. She wondered if her heart was in it. In fact, she wondered so much about the embrace that had not actually occurred that, when she found Percy’s shrewd eyes were studying her profile, she blushed hotly. Quite how Percy interpreted this blush she was not sure, but he gave a little smile which just turned his lips at one corner.

  “Yes,” he said. “I should love to come here, when the flowers are just beginning to open, and capture the darling buds; the petals tightly folded, the flower furled but awakening.”

  “You make it sound thoroughly indecent!” Anna could not help being amused by the way in which he spoke.

  “Oh, but it would be. Flowers are an entirely sensual pleasure. The warm, musky perfume, the soft, unblemished petals.”

  “Then, when the bloom has passed and the petals fallen, you would trample them underfoot.”

  “That’s Nature. A profligate wanton.” They sat in mutual silence. Then Percy commented, “Some of these roses must be very old. The roots are gnarled and woody.”

  Anna decided that she had been wrong about her kiss. It seemed rather a shame. She had never been kissed by someone as astonishingly handsome as Percy. In fact, she was rather a novice as far as kisses were concerned. Andrew had not been a very kissy sort of man. He nev
er kissed out of affection. His kisses had been reserved for the darkened bedroom; rather perfunctory kisses. She had always fancied that she might have missed out, that a kiss could be instilled with a passion which, like a good port – something she had experienced – would make her weak-limbed and dizzy with pleasure. Now, it appeared, she was destined to remain in ignorance for at least a while longer.

  “Yes, very old,” was what she said. “Jack has been pruning a lot of them back and cutting out the dead wood.”

  “Well, perhaps we will take a look at the other gardens,” said Percy. He stood up and held out his hand to Anna. She took it, quite innocently, and was surprised to find herself pulled up against the tall young man, the blond head bent towards her, and the lips on hers in the kiss that she thought she had missed. It was a firm, confident kiss; the kiss of a young man in no doubt of a return and in no doubt of his ability to please. Anna, however, faltered a moment, found she liked the feeling, and returned the salute with enthusiasm, and then pulled away suddenly.

  “I have offended you?” The voice expressed consternation but his eyes were cool.

  “No,” said Anna. “I have offended myself.”

  It was only then that she noticed the Brigadier who had just come into the garden