Hollow Crown Page 6

  ‘He must have been very proud,’ Hepple-Keen said.

  ‘I think he was,’ Scannon said meditatively.

  ‘When did he die?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Ten years ago, but my mother is still alive. I thought we might visit her if that wouldn’t be a bore.’

  Everyone indicated that they would be only too delighted and Edward was curious. Somehow, Scannon was one of those men you did not think of as having a mother. They stopped on the floor below the gallery and Scannon knocked on a huge mock-gothic door. A voice – quite a young-sounding voice – called on them to come in. They entered – not a room – but a suite of rooms and were greeted by a plain woman – in her mid-thirties, Edward guessed – with heavy spectacles and her hair in a bun on the back of her head. The word spinster might have been coined for her.

  ‘This is Miss Ruth Conway who is good enough to look after my mother for me. Since her stroke she has had to have someone with her all the time.’

  ‘You were there at tea-time when I arrived,’ Edward said, recognizing her as the rather severe-looking woman presiding over the teapot to whom he had not been introduced.

  ‘I was, Lord Edward,’ she agreed. ‘I help out when I can. But come and see Mrs Scannon. I’m afraid it’s not one of her good days.’

  Rather reluctantly, the party trooped past Miss Conway and entered a bedroom the size of a ballroom. A massive four-poster bed dominated the room and the heavy brocaded canopy, no doubt extracted from some ancient house fallen upon hard times, was moth-eaten and dirty-looking. An old lady lay in the bed supported by pillows. A Pekinese dog was curled up beside her. ‘Mother,’ Scannon said gently, ‘I have brought some people to see you.’

  With a gesture Edward was always to remember and which did much to mitigate his dislike of the man, Scannon took out his silk handkerchief and wiped away the spittle from her mouth. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and lifted her papery hand in his, as gently as if he were holding a moth, and kissed it.

  There was no response from the recumbent figure and after a minute Scannon stood aside and ushered his guests nearer her bed as though to receive the old woman’s blessing. There was something absurd and yet touching in this display of his mother for inspection by strangers. Edward was sure Scannon meant it for the best. Perhaps what he saw was not this wreck of a human being but a woman he had loved and could remember in her prime. None of the visitors were able to think of anything to say. It was clear the old woman was unable to speak or even move her head and it was profoundly embarrassing for those grouped around her bed. She looked straight ahead of her, a thin dribble of spittle leaking down her chin despite her son’s mopping. It was with considerable relief that they left the room to Ruth Conway and her charge.

  ‘She’s tired today,’ Scannon remarked, as if it explained everything.

  ‘It must be difficult for Miss Conway,’ Edward ventured.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I mean being alone with your mother all day,’ he stammered, not wishing to sound unsympathetic.

  ‘She likes it,’ Scannon said firmly. ‘She has a day off in the week when a girl comes in from the village, but she has nowhere to go.’

  How unutterably sad, Edward thought. He found himself thinking of Verity Browne, the absolute opposite of poor Miss Conway, and he suddenly wished he was with her now instead of in this gloomy house with all these people in whom he had no interest whatsoever and whose politics he detested. He caught Dannie’s eye at that moment and a slight shiver of guilt or of anticipation – he hardly knew which – ran up his spine.

  Gratefully, the little party found themselves once again in the hall but they were not yet to be released. ‘We have dungeons here,’ Scannon said. ‘Not really dungeons,’ he added seeing Daphne Hepple-Keen go white. ‘There’s a games room – a billiard table, ping-pong, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you know, I think I’ll turn in,’ Lord Benyon said, and Inna looked at him gratefully.

  ‘I’m rather tired, too,’ Lady Hepple-Keen began timidly.

  ‘Nonsense, my dear. Do buck up, Daphne. You can watch me beat Lord Edward at billiards before going to bed. What about you, Carstairs?’

  ‘I’m game. A hundred up, Corinth?’

  Daphne looked beseechingly at Edward who said, ‘It is rather late – how about tomorrow?’

  Dannie said, ‘I’m going to bed but you boys do what you want.’

  Harbin said, rather unexpectedly, ‘Sure, count me in, though I warn you, Leo, I haven’t played in years.’

  ‘Right then,’ Scannon said. ‘Pickering, bring us brandy and cigars, will you?’

  They went through a green baize door, down a flight of stairs into a cavernous games room. Scannon switched on two chandeliers but their feeble light left a black pool over the billiard table.

  ‘Turn the table light on, will you, Harbin, there’s a good fellow,’ Scannon said, making for a rack of cues underneath a score board. Harbin went over to the billiard table and switched on the light which hung low over the green felt, soft as new-mown grass. In a moment, the huge expanse of dark green was transformed into a swathe of emerald, lush as swamp grass. Harbin let out an oath and fell back a pace. The others turned in surprise. To their amazement they saw, sitting plumb in the middle of the billiard table, a huge rat. The animal, half the size of Mrs Scannon’s Pekinese, stared back at them, his eyes gleaming yellow in the light. At last, as though reluctant to give way, he lolloped off the table and disappeared into a dark corner of the room. Daphne Hepple-Keen gave a shriek of horror and Hepple-Keen’s cigar dropped from his mouth. ‘Damn my eyes!’ he exclaimed and then apologized. Edward said, vacuously, ‘I say, Leo, you’ll have to do something about your friend in the morning.’

  Carstairs suggested an immediate rat hunt but found no takers. Harbin said sharply, ‘Sir Geoffrey, might I suggest you take your wife upstairs and give her a drop of brandy. She’s very shaken.’

  Edward saw the American was right. Daphne was fighting back tears and, since her husband seemed unable or unwilling to do anything to calm her, he took her gently by the arm and led her up the stairs into the drawing-room. They were soon joined by the others, Scannon apologizing and saying he would get ‘the damn thing seen to first thing’. They met Pickering bearing glasses and a decanter.

  ‘Brandy for Lady Hepple-Keen, Pickering, quick as you like. We’ve all had a bit of a shock. Did you know there were rats in the billiard room?’

  Pickering put on an expression of concern. ‘I feared there were rats downstairs, sir. I have spoken to Williams about it but he looked and said I was imagining things.’

  ‘Williams is my head gardener,’ Scannon explained. ‘Well, send him to me after breakfast, will you, Pickering.’

  Scannon seemed unmoved by having rats in his cellars. Perhaps it was inevitable in this huge, run-down pile of a house. Edward hoped the bedrooms at least were vermin-free. When he had said his goodnights – Carstairs still protesting at missing a sporting opportunity – he went to his own room and found Fenton turning down the bed. ‘There is a hot-water bottle in the bed, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘Glad you warned me,’ Edward replied. ‘I have had enough surprises for the time being,’ and he told Fenton about the rat incident.

  ‘Most unpleasant, my lord. I confess to having an antipathy towards the animals, amounting to a phobia.’

  ‘Well, you go to bed, my lad. I expect we gave the rat as much of a shock as he gave us so he won’t be exploring.’

  ‘I very much hope not, my lord.’

  When he had undressed and donned his pyjamas, Edward wrapped himself in his dressing gown and, rather reluctantly, went out into the corridor and knocked on Molly’s door. There was a good deal of scuffling on the other side of the door and he wondered what was up. It was odd how embarrassing it was to be doing this when, after all, he had spent so many nights alone with her in Africa – chastely enough, but intimate nevertheless. But this was England and he determined he wa
s going to tell her he would postpone their talk to the morning. He could not understand what had made him suggest talking this evening except that he wanted to get the whole thing over and done with. It wasn’t late but he would have some explaining to do if he were caught corridor-creeping.

  Molly opened her door clad in a diaphanous dressing gown which barely covered her pyjamas. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, as though she had been expecting someone else. She looked – as no doubt she knew – alluring. He noticed she was still wearing her make-up. ‘Sorry to take so long opening the door but it’s rather stiff.’

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I thought maybe it would be better if we had our chat tomorrow. I’ve got a bit of a head, made none the better for meeting a rat on Leo’s billiard table.’

  ‘Oh, how priceless! Do tell. Come in for a moment. It would be much safer than talking out here. People will get quite the wrong impression. It would be the wrong impression, wouldn’t it, Edward? I find I’ve been regretting all those missed opportunities in Africa. It was bliss, wasn’t it, darling?’

  Edward did not like the ‘darling’. He had not come to Haling to have an affair with Molly Harkness.

  ‘It was fun but we were all a bit younger then.’

  He couldn’t think why he had said that. It wasn’t what he had meant to say and it sounded rude. ‘I mean, you’re still deliriously young, but I’m . . . ’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, Edward. You know you only feel old when you want to.’ She drew him into the room, got into bed and insisted he sat on the edge of it, not in the chair he made for at first. ‘I want you near me. We can’t talk about . . . intimate things if you’re the other side of the room.’

  He was now highly embarrassed. What if he was to start accusing her of theft and blackmail and she made a scene and screamed rape? He oughtn’t to be here. He got up, but she pulled him down.

  ‘Darling Edward. You’re so good-looking and you think I’m just an old witch.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ he said desperately.

  ‘Well, if you haven’t come to make love to me what have you come for?’

  There was a hint of steel in her voice which gave him pause.

  ‘I . . . I was dining with Joe Weaver the other night and he . . . ’

  ‘Joe! He’s such a sweetie. Did he say anything about . . . ?’

  ‘He said you had run off with some letters belonging to Wallis Simpson. Is that true?’

  Molly wrapped her dressing gown round her with exaggerated care. ‘I hope you haven’t come to scold me, Edward. That would be so unlike you. You’re my friend – my closest friend.’

  ‘I am your friend and that’s why I am trying to prevent you making the most awful fool of yourself. You did take the letters, then?’

  ‘What! You’re not some sort of policeman too, are you?’

  ‘No. Joe thought that, as a friend, I might be the best person to sort all this out before anyone had to resort to policemen.’

  Molly said nothing for a moment and Edward wondered what she had meant by asking if he was ‘some sort of policeman, too’. He supposed there was never going to be a good time to accuse her of theft but eleven thirty in her bedroom might very well be the worst. He wondered if she would deny having taken the letters or accuse him of betraying her.

  In the event she said, ‘I did take the letters.’ She spoke in a small, tight voice, close to a scream. He must try and calm her, he thought. It was like dealing with a wild animal, small, unpredictable and with sharp claws.

  ‘But why? Why take them? Was it to embarrass Mrs Simpson?’

  ‘That woman!’ Molly spoke in a vehement hiss. ‘She’s evil. David loved me. He really loved me and she came and took him from me and now she’s going to ruin him.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard,’ he said sourly, ‘I begin to wonder if he can love. He seems infatuated with Wallis but I’m not sure it’s love.’

  ‘He did love me. He’s a dear man. He wrote to me – lots and lots and I’ve got those letters. He’s never even asked for them back.’ She sounded puzzled, insulted. ‘It was awful, Edward. I used to speak to him on the telephone several times a day and then one day they said he wasn’t at home, only I knew he was. And I never spoke to him again.’

  ‘You mean, he never tried to explain or anything?’

  ‘No, he just wasn’t there. I couldn’t get near him. His secretary . . . his friends like Fruity Metcalfe just wouldn’t let me see him. It was her. I know it was her. She told him to forget me and he did.’

  ‘Oh Molly,’ he said, getting up from the bed, ‘I’m so sorry. You must be very hurt but there’s nothing you can do. You’ve just got to accept that royals do things differently.’

  It was lame. He knew it was lame but what could he say? She had been turned off without a word like a pregnant lady’s maid. Her lover’s conduct had been shameful but there was no way back. He must try and make her see that.

  ‘But there is something I can do about it. I know I can’t get him back. I wouldn’t want him back – not if he came crawling . . . ’ Edward did not believe that for an instant. He had seen her face when she had imagined he had come with a message from him. ‘. . . but, I can stop him having Wallis Simpson. I can do that . . . for the good of the country,’ she added piously.

  ‘You mean you can blackmail her . . . ?’

  Molly looked at him suspiciously. ‘They’ve told you about my letter, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That wasn’t blackmail. I didn’t ask for money. I didn’t ask for anything for myself. I just asked that she should go away.’ She spat out the words. ‘And, if it came to a court of law, no one could say . . . ’

  Edward shuddered. He had a vision of Mrs Simpson standing at the witness box discussing her private affairs in front of the gawping crowd. That at least could not be allowed to happen. ‘But Molly, your bitterness I can understand. You have been treated shabbily.’

  ‘Shabbily! I have been treated shabbily, as you so quaintly put it, but you don’t seem to understand. That woman is a monster.’

  Edward thought about the woman with whom he had sat at dinner: calm, reasonable, intelligent. She might be – what did they say? – ‘on the make’. She might be a little too avid for precious stones; she might have an unhealthy influence over the King. But to call her a monster – that was patently ridiculous.

  ‘Surely not,’ he said gently.

  Molly made as if she were going to embrace him. He could smell the wine on her breath and see the crow’s-feet under her eyes. She was still a beautiful woman but in a few more years she would – if she did not find a good man – descend into that circle of hell reserved for ‘women with a past’, women who had been dealt a good hand but had been destroyed by kings and knaves.

  ‘Did they say I had taken anything else from Mrs Simpson?’ She demanded. ‘I’m not a thief.’

  ‘No, they just said you’d taken letters.’

  ‘Letters, yes. Letters from the King revealing the power that woman has over him. He tells her everything, Edward, not just love talk. He says in one letter how the Prime Minister feels about the possibility of Germany uniting itself with Austria. He quotes Lord Halifax . . . and so on,’ she ended, seeing that Edward’s eyes had opened wide.

  ‘He oughtn’t to have discussed government policy with her . . . ’

  ‘And he says “ask Ribbentrop what I should do”.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Edward said after a moment to take in the folly of the man who was his king. ‘But you cannot possibly think of giving these letters to the newspapers. They wouldn’t print them, of course, but if any of it leaked out . . . ’

  ‘I know and of course I wouldn’t. Did you know, they’ve already tried to take them back?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know – the police, I suppose,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘You think it wasn’t burglars?’

  ‘What burglars don’t steal jewellery lying on a dressing table, or
money in a wallet?’

  ‘I see. Presumably they didn’t find what they were looking for?’

  ‘No,’ she said, smiling like a naughty child. ‘They did not. You see, I never leave them anywhere I am not. Even when I go down to dinner I carry them on me.’

  ‘You’ve got them on you now?’

  ‘I might have. Are you going to find out?’ she said archly.

  Edward withdrew his hand which was resting on her arm. ‘No, of course not. But don’t you realize you are in danger? Aren’t you afraid that if it gets around you have these . . . these documents, someone – maybe someone you know nothing about, an enemy agent, a newspaperman – might try and take them from you? You’re in deep water, Molly. Hand them over to me and then you will be able to sleep in peace.’

  ‘No!’ she said defiantly. ‘Why should I? Anyway, there’s more to it than that. In one of the letters the King refers to a report he has seen – a government report about her.’

  ‘About Wallis?’

  ‘I think so. There’s not much about it but I get the feeling it’s a report about her background. You know there are some quite unpleasant stories about her first marriage?’

  ‘She was in the Far East?’

  ‘Yes, but I heard her husband was a drunkard and a crook – I know about those,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’ve heard it said he humiliated her – took her to houses of . . . well, they say he did horrible things to her, made her whore for him.’

  Edward thought for a moment. It was more than likely that the intelligence services would have looked into Mrs Simpson’s background and, if they had found out she was . . . unsuitable to be a decent man’s wife, let alone a king’s . . . It hardly bore thinking about. He said at last, ‘Molly, it frightens me, all this. I thought you were just indulging in . . . I don’t know . . . understandable pique, but what you are telling me is very serious. I beg you to hand over to me what you have – for your own safety.’