The Murders of Richard III - Elizabeth Peters [67]
Jacqueline didn’t answer. She stopped before Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones’s door and tried the knob.
The door was locked.
“I expect she locked herself in,” Jacqueline said. “Thus demonstrating more intelligence than any of the others. However, we had better make sure.”
She pounded on the door.
The noise sounded hellishly loud to Thomas, but at first it had no effect on the occupant of the room. He was beginning to feel apprehensive when there were sounds from within. The door was flung open.
Presumably Wilkes had summoned one of the female servants to help Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones into her nightclothes. She wore a voluminous gown of pale blue. Her face was a bilious yellow. The colors clashed hideously. Her puffy features were set in an expression that would have made Shakespeare’s villainous Richard look like a saint. With an effort that made her quiver from head to foot, Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones focused her eyes.
“How dare you?” she moaned. “How dare you, how—”
The door started to close. Jacqueline threw herself against it. “Wait a minute. Are you all right?”
“No,” said Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones emphatically.
“Have you been sick?” Thomas inquired anxiously.
The question was not well phrased. Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones’s eyes looked like currants sunk in a doughy slab of pudding. She slammed the door. Jacqueline removed her arm just in time.
She and Thomas stood staring at the door until it stopped vibrating. Thomas expected an irate delegation to emerge from the other rooms, but apparently the guests were still comatose.
“Was she or wasn’t she?” he asked.
“Sick? Definitely. As to whether she has been visited by the comedian, I think not. He likes to have his efforts noted and appreciated. A hung-over female tossing her cookies in private wouldn’t do the trick.”
“How vulgar you are.”
“I haven’t begun to be vulgar yet. Let’s get out of here.”
“Can I go to—”
“No, you cannot go to bed. I need fresh air. Let’s go for a walk.”
“It’s raining.”
“So it is. How unusual.”
Thomas sighed. To walk in the rain with the lady you love is romantic when you are eighteen. When you are fifty it is merely conducive to sniffles and rheumatism.
“How about the conservatory?”
The conservatory was an acceptable compromise, but it was not the happiest locale for a conversation in that house of confusion. The electric lights did not wholly dispel the gray gloom of a rainy morning, and the rain drummed on the glass panes overhead, setting up quivering echoes in the greenery. Epiphytes hung like fleshy miniature monsters. The fronds of palm trees brushed the glass roof; they had squat, spiny trunks, like deformed pineapples. Green branches reached out at them as they walked along the graveled paths. Such was Thomas’s mood that he would not have been surprised if a swollen, fecund bud had opened, fringed with fangs, and snapped at his sleeve.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked.
The damp air made Jacqueline’s hair curl. Little tendrils, like copper shavings, coiled distractingly over her ears and at her temples.
“What I should do is call the police,” she said, in a voice that did not match the charming curls.
“And what is your complaint?”
“Half a dozen people have been physically attacked. What do you want before you call the police? A couple of murders, or…” Jacqueline’s mouth remained open, shaping the word she had not said.
Thomas peered at her. When she did not continue, he said, “The people who have been attacked are the ones who ought to complain. If they won’t, and Sir Richard won’t, there is nothing much you can do. Nothing has happened to you.”
“Aha,” said Jacqueline, turning on him. “So that’s what’s bugging you. You’d like to see me upside down in a barrel, I suppose.”
“No thrill in that. I’ve seen your legs. They are good legs; one might even call them excellent legs; but—” Thomas looked closely at her. “For God’s sake,” he said, in a different voice, “of course I don’t want you to be attacked. You drive me crazy with