The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [66]
“Oh, yes, I do,” Jacqueline said coyly.
Still on one foot, his shirt tail hanging out, Thomas cursed with a fluency Kent might have envied.
“Okay,” he said, when he had exhausted his repertoire. “Let’s go see.”
It was almost an anticlimax to see the head stuck jauntily on top of one of the high carved posts of Kent’s bed. The cranium was covered with a fuzzy grayish coating meant to suggest gray hair.
From where he stood in the doorway, Thomas could see Kent’s entire body, or at least that part of it that was not covered by sheet and blanket. Kent had not stirred or shifted position since they had checked on him earlier, and he was still snoring.
“This isn’t particularly picturesque,” Thomas said critically. “Maybe I’m getting used to it. I feel cheated.”
“He just tiptoed in and stuck the head on the bedpost,” Jacqueline said thoughtfully. “There was a hole at the base of the other neck too.”
“He might at least have covered Kent’s head.”
“I’m so sorry he disappointed you, Thomas darling. But I don’t blame our anonymous friend for being cautious. Why should he risk waking General Kent? He got his grand effect with Philip.”
“Shall we wake him up?” Thomas asked.
“Do you really want to?”
They looked at each another conspiratorially. Thomas felt a momentary pang of compunction, but it did not endure. Kent might be a bit startled to wake and see the head grinning at him, but knowing that his own skull was firmly attached to his neck bones, he would not be frightened. The man was a bore anyway.
“No,” he said. “Let’s just steal away.”
As he closed the door softly behind them, another thought struck him. “We can wipe one suspect off the list,” he said. “Philip couldn’t—”
Just then, a neighboring door opened and Philip stepped out into the corridor.
He was as white as the bandage around his head, and his eyes were uncertain. After a surprised start he advanced on the staring pair with a stealthy, theatrical stalk.
“You do me wrong, being so majestical,” he declaimed inaccurately, but with great feeling, “to offer up the show of force—”
“The show is not of force,” Thomas said. “What are you doing out of bed? Where have you been?”
“Where do you think I’ve been?” Philip asked poignantly. “I’m not a ghost, actually. I’ve a body. ’Gin a body meet a body….”
He swayed alarmingly. Thomas stepped forward to support him.
“Good Lord,” he exclaimed, as an unmistakable smell reached his nostrils. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to drink after a head injury? Rawdon shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“Back to bed,” Jacqueline said. “Come on, Thomas, here we go….”
They dragged the protesting actor to his room. When they had him safely in his bed, Jacqueline went straight to the bureau drawer and removed a bottle of whiskey. Philip was still singing “Comin’ Through the Rye” as they left.
“Put him back on the list, Thomas,” Jacqueline said, tightening the cap on the bottle before putting it into her purse. “He can walk.”
“Not very well. Damn it, Jacqueline, I know the guy’s an actor, but nobody could counterfeit injury that effectively. I felt that crack on his cranium with my own two hands. If it weren’t for that…”
“Yes?” Jacqueline said encouragingly.
“He’s malicious enough. He was spouting the most Godawful slanders about the others before we went down for the banquet.”
“Such as?”
“It would take too long to repeat them. Can I go to bed now?”
“No. Can’t you rise above the demands of your vile body?”
“It feels vile at the moment, I must admit. What do you want to do now?”
“I want to pay a call on Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones.”
Thomas’s head was fogged by fatigue, malmsey, and chronic sinus trouble. It took him several seconds to understand.
“Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones—Queen Anne. You think she—”
“Richard poisoned her, didn’t he?”
“No, he did not. She died of consumption, or something equally lingering.”
“Something with boiling oil in it.”
“Your quotations are getting less and less appropriate. Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones is probably okay. The old witch