The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [10]
Jacqueline, who had been staring at the panorama of English countryside unrolling before them at a genteel speed of ten miles an hour, delved into her purse and eventually produced a small tube.
“Spot remover,” she said, proffering the tube without looking at Thomas.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t have a decent lunch instead of munching sandwiches on top of a bus,” he grumbled.
“We’d have missed the bus,” Jacqueline said patiently. “And there isn’t another one till tomorrow.”
“Ridiculous idea, anyhow.” The spot remover worked beautifully. Thomas went on, in a more affable tone, “We have had to transfer three times already.”
“You’ve lived in England for years. Have you ever taken local buses before?”
Memory gripped Thomas, so unexpectedly and so strongly that he felt an actual physical pain.
“Thirty-five years ago,” he said. “Before the war. I was sixteen. It was my first trip abroad.”
Jacqueline was silent, which was just as well; Thomas would not have heard her. What was the name of that girl? He had written to her for almost a year…. He had forgotten her name, but he could see her as vividly as if he had parted from her, in the bluebell-carpeted woods, only yesterday. Hair like pale-yellow silk and eyes as blue as the flowers…
With a nostalgic sigh he turned to Jacqueline.
“You’re a witch. Are those rumors about your purse true?”
“What rumors?”
“The students claim it’s magic. That you can produce anything you want out of it.”
“Such nonsense.”
“You mean you always carry spot remover?”
“When I’m wearing a white suit and taking buses to visit a noble peer of the realm I do. Be sensible, Thomas.”
II
In the year 1466 Sir John Crosby, alderman of London, built a town house in the city district called Bishopsgate. The Great Hall of this handsome residence still survives in a new location on the Embankment. Since Richard III, for whom Jacqueline was developing a distinctly ambivalent attitude, had once rented Sir John’s house, Jacqueline had been taken to Chelsea to see Crosby Hall. Ricardians liked to visit the place and gaze sentimentally at the walls that had once enclosed their hero. They are perhaps among the few who appreciate the irony of the Hall’s present location. The adjacent building was the home of the saint and martyr and questionable historian, Sir Thomas More, whose biography of Richard infuriates that king’s modern admirers.
The Yorkshire copy of Crosby Hall looked just as out of place as its London original. It was an exact replica, but instead of building a house to go with it, Herman Weldon, the father of the present owner, had attached the Hall onto an existing country residence. This mansion, Georgian in date, seemed to turn its back on the addition. The mellow red brick did not clash with the pale stone of the Hall; it ignored it.
Jacqueline didn’t comment directly on the unfortunate juxtaposition. She merely remarked that bastardized combinations of architectural styles sometimes succeeded, but only, in her opinion, when they grew naturally through the centuries. Thomas said nothing. He agreed with the aesthetic judgment, but the romantic appeal of a fifteenth-century Hall superseded taste; he would have liked it if it had been built onto a high-rise apartment building.
He could tell by Jacqueline’s face that the architectural monstrosity had confirmed her prejudice against its owner. He had given her a brief biography of their host. Sir Richard had inherited his title, his house, and his Ricardian enthusiasm from his father, who had been a highly successful merchant. It was inevitable that the merchant’s son should be named Richard, but far less likely that Old Crouchback’s namesake should have reacted so positively to his father’s