Lady Emmeline and the Swansong Caper Read online

  Lady Emmeline and the Swansong Caper

  By

  Anna Reader

  *****

  Lady Emmeline and the Swansong Caper

  Copyright: Anna Sadler, 2018

  First published: Oxford, England, 2018

  The right of Anna Sadler (writing as Anna Reader) to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by he in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The St. Penrith’s Series

  FLORA MACKINTOSH AND THE HUNGARIAN AFFAIR

  Flora Mackintosh's only real problem was managing to source decent gin at school - at least until she received a mysterious telegram from an uncle she never knew she had, summoning her to Hungary. Sneaking out of St. Penrith's for Girls and with the promise of adventure in the air, Flora packs her hip-flask, Gauloises, and pistol, and sets off for Europe.

  LADY EMMELINE AND THE SWANSONG CAPER

  Lady Emmeline Purdew was attempting to escape yet another undesirable proposal from Gussie Featherington-Blyth when she stumbled across a crime-scene. As soon as the criminal revealed himself, Purdie found herself embroiled in an uproarious series of capers and cocktails. With her trusty best-friend Pongo by her side, Purdie navigates a world of romance, smugglers, cricket, and family secrets.

  Also by Anna Reader…

  LUCKY BET

  Lady Elizabeth Randolph had always been a rebellious young woman, but when her scheming guardian threatens to marry her off to a grotesque stranger, she finds her gumption truly tested. Escaping to London disguised as a young man, Elizabeth discovers a new world of gambling, duels, cruelty and love. Railing against the limitations of her gender and with her best friend, William, by her side, Elizabeth sets out to win her freedom.

  For Elizabeth, my darling girl

  ONE

  THE door to the library opened slowly, and a small head with a smart permanent wave peeked around it and scrutinized the shadows. Finding the room empty, and spurred on by the need to evade yet another toe-curlingly awkward proposal from Gussie Featherington-Blyth, the slim figure slipped through the door and eased it shut behind her. Moving through the half-light, the girl sought a table-lamp and flicked on the switch with burgundy-tipped nails, bathing the sleeping books in a warm glow. With a sigh of relief, she helped herself to a healthy measure of whisky from the drinks cabinet, drew a silver case from an elegant clutch, and collapsed into a wing-backed arm-chair, expertly flicking a cigarette between her scarlet lips. She was, as the lamp-light made only too apparent, indecently pretty.

  Lady Emmeline Purdew - Purdie to her friends - was one of the season’s most sought-after guests, blessed as she was with an outrageous measure of both beauty and bonhomie. Long-limbed, auburn-haired, and from a Very Good Family, Purdie was a firm favourite of contemporaries and hostesses alike. Her greatest disadvantage (at least according to the long roll-call of her exasperated and outmatched childhood governesses) was that she had been born Clever – which, according to these uncompromisingly mirthless women, was destined to cast a blight on her future happiness; ignoring these gloomy prophesies, she’d arrived at Cambridge University the previous autumn, along with her twin-brother Algernon.

  Purdie’s career at the finest of England’s academic institutions had blazed bright and brief like a dying star. Lauded by her tutors for her exceptional grasp of Modern Literature, she had been expected to confound the supposed limits of her woman’s brain and attain a first-class degree – yet the devil in her had won out, as was so often the way, and she had scuppered her chances of greatness by borrowing a suit from Algernon and attending the gathering of a gentlemen’s drinking society in Magdalene College. The subterfuge had been going swimmingly; that was until she’d been forced to interrupt the pompous young Etonian sitting opposite her, who was expounding at great and tedious length on the best way to lure a member of the fairer sex into acquiescence. “Tell her your father is a baronet,” he had drawled, “and that you write poetry. They are simple creatures, you see, and can never resist a Romantic Aristo.”

  “Balderdash,” Purdie had said, quite cheerfully.

  “I beg your pardon?” the young man had spluttered, not used to being challenged on anything, given his social standing and fortune.

  “In my experience, girls aren’t in the least interested in either bad verse or baronets,” she had explained, helping herself to another glass of the Society’s vile red wine. “A passable knowledge of gin will serve you much better.”

  When asked to cite her authority for this disclosure, Purdie had informed the eager gathering that the method had been known to win the favour of several of her contemporaries – and, indeed, that she herself had even been moved to dance with the generally repellent Bartholomew Wriosely when he had invented a particularly delicious blend of Hendricks and elderflower cordial in her honour the previous summer. This revelation had promptly caused a riot, the flames of which were fanned still further when Purdie had revealed herself to be an interloper into the Hallowed World of Men.

  Ruminating happily upon this delicious memory, she drank from her tumbler of whisky and savoured the only moment of peace she had had since breakfast. Gussie had been pursuing her like the plague for weeks - no matter how many times she explained that she was absolutely certain he could never tempt her into matrimony, he resolutely continued in his ham-fisted attempts at courting her. He had, the previous evening, even gone so far as to challenge Francis Masterson to a duel when that young man had had the audacity to ask Purdie to dance for the third time; which, considering it was 1929, had been unexpected.

  Purdie dipped her small nose into the tumbler and inhaled appreciatively. Lagavulin had always been one of her favourites, and she was enjoying this stolen moment enormously. Tipping back in the Parker Knoll she lit her cigarette, threw one slender ankle over the other, and blew a series of uniform smoke-rings into the air.

  The grandfather clock in the hall struck eleven. The comforting hum of a party in full swing continued below her, and Purdie was on the cusp of refreshing her glass when her keen ears suddenly detected an inexplicable scraping sound. With a tremor of terrified fascination, she noticed that the sash window to her right was being silently prised open from the outside. Fizzing with curiosity, Purdie hurled the embers of her dying cigarette into the whisky tumbler and pressed herself deeper into the capacious chair, willing invisibility.

  The bottom edge of the window moved inexorably upwards, and Purdie looked on from the depths of the wing-back as a well-shod foot slipped over the sill. Wishing she’d had the foresight to use an ashtray and keep hold of her whisky – one never wants to find oneself pinioned in a sticky situation without a glass in hand – Purdie peered out from behind the head-rest and watched as a dark shadow bled across the carpet. This, she thought with a shudder, was not quite what she had had in mind when she’d ducked into the room to escape the party.

  Becoming suddenly very self-conscious about the apparently appalling loudness of her breathing, Purdie locked her cherry lips together as the figure stalked across the chiaroscuro of the darkened room. She could just make out the outline of a man edging towards the desk with silent purpose. All at once, and with a flash of dizzy inspiration, she knew exa
ctly what the intruder would be looking for: the diamond Bard.

  Gussie frequently made boast of his uncle’s jewel-encrusted bust of Shakespeare, and Purdie had spied the ghastly curio when she’d been availing herself of her host’s excellent whisky. It was, as one might expect, an appalling vision of misspent wealth, and in truth made the nation’s most beloved poet appear almost reptilian. Nevertheless, Purdie’s impeccable moral compass was suddenly galvanised into action: the bust of the Bard may be tasteless, but it belonged in this room. Indeed, if the oddity were given a wider audience by a thief, then there was a grave risk that it might inspire a trend – and that absolutely could not be permitted. Certainly not on Purdie’s watch.

  “I do beg your pardon,” she said in her clear voice, not giving herself the chance to baulk, “but I feel I ought to point out that I cannot let you leave this room with Shakespeare’s bejewelled head. It is absolutely ghastly, of course, but I must insist upon it remaining exactly where it is.”

  The thief emitted a small yelp and spun around, still hidden in the half-light.

  “I also feel I ought to warn you that I always keep a small pistol in my purse,” she fibbed, “in case of emergencies. And as I’ve just had a double-measure of fairly potent whisky, I simply cannot vouch for my aim.”

  The thief froze, stared at Purdie, and suddenly let out a bark of wholly unexpected laughter. The sound was strangely familiar, and Purdie hesitated for a moment as she reached for her imaginary gun.

  “I can’t think what you find so amusing,” she said rather primly, as she squinted into the darkness, “but if you don’t slip back through that window immediately, I shall scream the bally house down.”

  “Good lord, Em,” the thief said, almost doubled-over now with mirth. “Don’t scream, for heaven’s sake!”

  Purdie’s blood ran cold, and she stared at the hooting figure with mounting incredulity. “It can’t be…” she breathed at last, eyebrows snapped together in consternation.

  “I’m afraid it is,” the thief confirmed, with something approaching glee.

  The evening, Purdie thought to herself, had taken a most unexpected turn. Never one to panic in a crisis, however, she arose, queen-like, from the Parker Knoll, and marched across the room to turn on the light.

  “Pater!” she cried, as her suspicions were confirmed. “What in the blazes…I thought you were supposed to be having supper with Uncle Iva? I know he can become a bit of a bore after the third glass, but really, Pa, that hardly excuses breaking and entering.”

  Lord Alverstock drew a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and chuckled softly. “I will of course explain the whole, my darling,” he announced cheerfully, “in the morning.”

  “You can’t really be intending to steal that thing!” Purdie exclaimed as her father’s hand descended ominously towards the bard’s gleaming head, the embers from his cigarette illuminating the exquisite diamonds. “It’s absolutely vile.”

  “That it is,” Lord Alverstock agreed. “However, I have need of it. Now, I know this is a shade unexpected,” he said soothingly, as Purdie’s expression oscillated between irritation and amusement, “but this is all quite above board, I assure you.”

  Purdie’s father was an absurdly handsome man. Standing at well over six feet and still as lean as a man half his age, he had – as he always delighted in telling his offspring – once been the fastest schoolboy in Britain over the 440-yard dash. His hair was chestnut-brown, his eyes hazel, and the luxurious moustache perched above his top lip beginning to display only the merest suspicion of greyness.

  Most remarkably, Lord Alverstock had lied about his age in order to fight in the Great War – shaving a good fifteen years off his half a century – and it was testament to his youthful vigour and irresistible bonhomie that the deception had succeeded without a hitch. He had returned from France at the end of the War when Algie and Purdie were just turning ten; the only evidence of his military interlude provided by a badly scarred forearm and a case of night-terrors which had lasted until the twins’ early teens. From the moment he’d walked back through the door in his officer’s uniform, however, he and Purdie had been the very best of friends – he was her hero, she was his joy, and they had found boundless delight in one another’s company.

  “I just cannot imagine….” Purdie began, when the awful sound of a turning door-knob announced that the Purdews would not be alone for long. Her heart sank as the door swung ajar to reveal her would-be-beau.

  “Who the dickens are you talking to, Purdie?” Gussie Featherington-Blyth inquired, eyeing Purdie with the intoxicated expression of a twitcher pursuing an exotic bird.

  “Gussie!” Purdie replied, attempting to sound breezy as she prayed that her father had been able to conceal himself in time. “Well it’s about time….I…I was hoping you’d find me.”

  “You were?” Gussie exclaimed, much taken aback, but optimistically determined to view the volte-face as a positive step forwards in his quest for matrimony.

  “I was?” Purdie replied, rather distracted as she spotted one of her father’s dark brogues peaking out from behind the desk. “Ha! Yes, yes, of course I was, Gussie. Won’t you take me on a quick spin around the conservatory?”

  “I should think I would,” Gussie spluttered, leaping forwards to tuck Purdie’s small hand in the crook of his arm. “Fancy a ciggie?”

  Without waiting for a response Gussie had plucked one from his pocket in the manner of an amateur magician, and thrust it towards Purdie so enthusiastically that he managed to poke it into her eye.

  “Cripes, sorry old girl,” he said, as Purdie tried to mask her father’s audible laughter with an impromptu coughing fit.

  “Not to worry, Gus,” she assured him, removing the Gauloise with a stunned blink as she steered him urgently away from the library. “Now what was it you were saying about the strength of the Pound? Simply too fascinating...”

  TWO

  Three hours after encountering her father in Gussie’s uncle’s library, a weary Purdie opened the door to her parents’ town-house and sloped in to the drawing room for a much-needed nightcap. Seizing the soda siphon, she spurted an expert measure into her scotch with feeling, before once again asking herself what in the world could have possessed her father to break into his old friend’s home to filch that loathsome bust. Query, she asked herself, unconsciously aping the style of E.M Delafield, whose exquisite diaries she had been reading in Time and Tide earlier that day, had her father suffered a complete mental collapse? Answer almost certainly yes. Just as she was assessing the merits of this particular theory, the object of her musings entered the drawing room and hailed his daughter with a characteristically jovial, “What ho, sprog.”

  Turning slowly, with the tumbler of scotch and soda in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other, Purdie surveyed her criminal progenitor for a moment before easing herself into a nearby arm-chair. “You managed to escape, then,” she remarked coolly.

  “Oh yes,” came the cheerful reply, as Lord Alverstock helped himself to a generous measure of brandy, “thanks to you getting rid of that pimply young toad.”

  Purdie eyed her father with intense displeasure, and lit her cigarette with a steady hand. “His name is Gussie Featherington-Blyth,” she informed him in awful accents, “and less of the “pimply,” if you please. Because of you, we are now engaged to be married.”

  Lord Alverstock suddenly roared with laughter as Purdie looked on in disgust. “I’m jolly glad that you find it so amusing, father o’mine,” she declared at last. “Gussie has promised to keep the whole thing a secret for a couple of days, but unless I can find a way to break it off before Friday, he’s going to put an announcement in The bally Times.”

  “Good heavens, Emmeline,” Lord Alverstock cried, wiping the tears from his eyes, “you can’t really mean to marry that man? I absolutely forbid it – he looked to be a decidedly Queer Fish.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Pa,” she retorted with feel
ing. “Did you know that he once tracked me down at the dentist, and burst into the treatment room to propose as Dr Markham was probing my mandibular molar? At the dentist, Pa. If I hadn’t been so paralysed by laughing gas, I would have leapt from Dr Markham’s third-storey bay window for the shame of it. However, this latest development is entirely your fault. If you hadn’t snuck into Lord Butterby’s house then I wouldn’t have been obliged to accompany Gussie to the conservatory – where he promptly proposed for the sixth time and where I, so unsettled by your unannounced appearance, didn’t have the presence of mind to refuse.”

  “Lord, what a confounded mess,” her father acknowledged, as his laughter subsided. “This must be rectified forthwith; the bust is certainly valuable, but I don’t think I’m quite prepared to sacrifice your happiness for it.”

  “You are too good,” Purdie replied in what she hoped were acid tones. “Now, to return to the point in hand – what the devil were you doing skulking around Lord Butterby’s library? And what could possibly have induced you to pinch the bust? Are we broke, Pa?”

  “Lord no – nothing like that.” Lord Alverstock looked suddenly rather awkward. “In fact, we’re doing rather well since Silly-Mid-Off had that win at Aintree.” He sighed, and slipped into quiet reflection.

  “Then what in the world’s the matter?” Purdie asked, alarmed by this unusual moment of gravity. “Father?”

  Lord Alverstock looked down at his daughter, his brown eyes communicating both sorrow and a silent apology. Purdie knew him well enough to see that something serious was afoot, and her blood started to run cold.

  “Now, I don’t want you to be upset, Em, but the fact is that the old body’s not quite firing on all cylinders. Rogue elements breaching the defences, as it were. The prognosis isn’t quite what one would wish, I’m afraid,” he added, with the briefest hesitation. “In short, it rather looks as though Old Father Time may be calling an end to the innings.”