Gentlemen Formerly Dressed (15 page)

After that, dining seemed less important. In the end they found a restaurant that sold battered fish and chipped potatoes. The meal was one that Rowland could manage one-handed without fuss or embarrassment, and so it was particularly enjoyed, despite its simplicity.

By the time they returned to the waxwork museum, Edna had quite happily spent most of the day immersed in the art of Marriott
Spencer. They found her using what looked like surgical instruments to whittle refinements into the facial features of a wax-cast head under the guidance of the hook-handed sculptor.

“Gentlemen!” Spencer exclaimed. “You have come to take my protégée so soon. We are not finished!”

Rowland checked his watch. It was getting late.

“But you must speak with Francis about your friend the aristocrat! He is in the next room… Go! Edna and I are busy.”

Edna laughed. “Go on,” she said quietly to Rowland. “I'll wash up while you speak with Frankie.”

Francis Pocock had worked at the wax museum since before the war. He was an immense man. His jowls expanded down to his shoulders in a way that made him look like a squat melting candle. Rowland could not help but wonder if the years of working with wax had caused the man's flesh to behave in a similar manner to his material. Pocock did not look up from his work.

Rowland introduced himself and his friends and eventually the wax sculptor extended a pudgy hand in greeting. “I'm busy. What do you want?”

“We were wondering about the statue of Lord Pierrepont, Mr. Pocock.”

“What about it?”

“For what kind of display do you intend it?”

“What's it to you?”

“I'm a friend of Lord Pierrepont's family,” Rowland said, knowing the claim was at best a gross exaggeration and more accurately an
outright falsehood. “I thought it might comfort them to know he was going to be remembered at Madame Tussaud's.”

Pocock grunted. “He won't be.” He looked at Rowland fiercely. “Friend of the family, eh? Well you tell Lady Pierrepont that unless she settles the account as agreed, I'll be melting him down to wax the floors!”

“Lady?” Rowland remembered then the intelligence of the wife of the British High Commissioner to Ceylon. “Euphemia is paying for the statue?” he asked, feigning familiarity with the new Lady Pierrepont. “I say, she didn't tell me that!”

“She hasn't paid a single penny for anything yet!” Pocock was clearly irate. “I risk my job to take on a private commission and then, when I've already cast the head, she decides a statue would be ghoulish just because he's dead!”

“I see. That is bad luck,” Rowland said, glaring at Milton who was grinning openly.

Pocock sighed. He stepped over to where the unfinished statue of Pierrepont had been leant against a wall and, with a measure of twisting and grunting, removed the head. He gave it to Rowland. “Here, for Lady Pierrepont with my condolences. She will at least be able to tell the baby what its late father looked like. If she pays her account I will make the rest of him!”

Rowland looked down at the waxen head which Pocock had thrust at him. It was, as far as he could tell, a startling likeness, though admittedly he had last seen Pierrepont in less than ideal circumstances.

Clyde, who was standing behind Pocock, was signalling wildly for Rowland to give the head back. Milton was trying not to laugh and, thankfully, Ernest had stopped with Edna and Spencer.

“I'll see that Lady Pierrepont—Euphemia, gets it—him,” Rowland said. Clyde groaned audibly. “I'm sure she'll be grateful.”

Pocock grunted and waved for them to go. “Tell her to pay!”

Rowland tried to carry the head discreetly but it was not really possible to do so. As it had no handle of any sort, he was forced to bundle it under his uninjured arm like a ball.

“I don't suppose you could wrap this up in something for me, Mr. Spencer,” he asked when they rejoined the sculptress and her tutor.

“Do we get to keep that?” Ernest asked, staring at the head in awe. The glass eyes looked blankly out from the crook of Rowland's arm.

“Afraid not, Ernie, we're just delivering it to someone for Mr. Pocock.”

The boy was clearly disappointed. Milton seemed so, too.

Obligingly, and without question, Spencer had Pierrepont's head wrapped in brown paper and twine, tying an extra loop to act as a handle. He swung the package on his hook a couple of times to test the knots were secure and, so satisfied, returned it to Rowland.

They thanked and farewelled Marriott Spencer then, and took Ernest to the souvenir shop in the vain search for something as desirable to a small boy as a wax head.

Exhausted by the day's adventures, Ernest fell asleep on the drive back to Ennismore Gardens. Clyde carried him into the terrace and they stayed for a while to drink tea with Kate and Ethel Bruce. They had a perfectly civilised conversation without once mentioning the head of Lord Pierrepont.

It was not until they'd returned to the privacy of their suites at Claridge's that Clyde spoke his mind.

“What the Dickens were you thinking, Rowly?” he demanded. “Why would you agree to take Lord Muck's ugly mug home with us?”

Rowland glanced at the head, which Milton had unwrapped and placed prominently on the sideboard. “It didn't seem like I could politely refuse.”

“For God's sake, he gave you a head, not his flaming dance card!”

“I trust your judgement, Rowly,” Milton said as he poured drinks. “You've got a good head on your shoulders… and another on the sideboard.”

Rowland smiled. “I'll take it to the recently widowed Lady Pierrepont. I'm more than a little intrigued to meet her to be honest.”

“Meet her? Doesn't it alarm you that she would want a wax replica of her husband?”

“Alarm me? No—not excessively.”

“Why not?”

Rowland shrugged. “I was at Oxford.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Clyde asked.

Rowland sat down. “I shared digs once with a chap called Rutherford, son of an earl. Nice fellow, liked horses. He had every nag he ever owned stuffed and mounted when it died… kept a taxidermist on staff and the horses in his ballroom. Had his first pony moved into our rooms at Oxford—a moth-eaten Shetland called Cloppy.”

Clyde stared at Rowland for a moment, unsure whether he was joking. “Right then,” he said uncertainly. “You're saying the English are mad?”

“The ones with titles can be eccentric.” Rowland rubbed the back of his neck where the weight of the sling was concentrated. “It's a wax head, Clyde—a little odd I'll grant you, but probably not all that different from commissioning a painting of your husband.”

Clyde gave up. “Very well, then. Go ahead and call on a grieving widow with her husband's head under your arm, but mate, don't be surprised if she calls the police.”

T
he light of the summer moon was almost bright as it streamed in through the open window. Rowland looked out onto Brook Street, reorienting himself after a brief and troubled sleep. Cursing, he wiped the cold sweat off his brow, his heart still beating rapidly and his breath ragged. Blow Wilfred and his advice… he needed a drink.

He didn't bother with a dressing-gown—the night was warm enough—making his way towards the sitting room and its ample drinks cabinet.

“What the hell…” It took him just a moment to realise that it was the waxen head that glared at him like some apparition from
the sideboard. The moonlight gave Pierrepont's face an ethereal luminosity; the shadows gave it a kind of sinister life.

“Good evening, Lord Pierrepont,” Rowland said quietly, smiling at his own reaction. “I gather you too are unable to sleep.” How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, that there was a head on the sideboard?

He poured himself a brandy and took the armchair opposite. The glassy eyes of Pierrepont's effigy seemed to follow his every move, baleful, resentful.

“I'm not sure what you expect me to do, old boy,” Rowland muttered flinching under the strange gaze. “It seems to me that you were determined to end badly. Someone was bound to take issue with your shenanigans eventually.”

It was fatigue of course, but for a moment Rowland thought the head sighed.

“I do wonder though,” Rowland went on, setting down his brandy without taking a sip, “exactly how the murderer managed to get into your rooms at that club of yours, without anyone raising an alarm. He might have used the tradesmen's entrance, I suppose, which means he was familiar with the club…”

Rowland sat back tapping his cast thoughtfully. For some reason, Pierrepont's glass eyes seemed less hostile now.

“The authorities don't seem too interested in who killed you, do they, old boy?” Rowland pointed sternly at the head. “That's what you get for dying in a frilly nightie. But I hear what you're saying… perhaps I could make some enquiries on your behalf.”

“Rowly?” Clyde stumbled into the sitting room, crashing into the couch as he came. “Are you talking to a ball of wax?”

“Clyde… sorry… I didn't mean to wake you.”

“Were you talking to Pierrepont?” Clyde repeated the question, incredulous.

“Yes.”

“Do you think that perhaps you are losing your mind?”

“He didn't reply, so no.” Rowland smiled. “When he begins to talk back, by all means, have me committed.”

“Rowly…”

“I was just thinking out loud, Clyde.”

Clyde stopped on the couch. “You still can't sleep?”

Rowland said nothing, aware that his ongoing insomnia was beginning to worry his friends.

Clyde glanced at the glass of brandy. “I thought Wilfred told you
not
to drink.”

“He said don't drink
alone
,” Rowland retorted. “You're here now… not to mention my good friend Pierrepont.”

Clyde laughed despite himself. “Fair enough.” He stood and poured himself a whisky, raising his glass to the wax head before he sat down again. “I expect Lady Pierrepont is glad she got old Bunky here to the altar before he was no longer able to make an honest woman of her.”

Rowland nodded. He too had concluded that the marriage was one of necessity. “Poor girl seems to have swapped one scandal for another.”

“She may not welcome you.”

“No doubt.” Rowland swirled the brandy in its glass. “But as fond as I have become of Pierrepont's sparkling conversation, he does not belong to us. I'll have to at least try to return him to his widow.”
Rowland read the letter without flinching. Penned in flowing ink on superior paper it nevertheless was a vitriolic diatribe of threats. Declaring him a race traitor, and a Bolshevik among other things more crude and profane, it explained in detail what he could expect when he fell into the hands of right-thinking men. It was the third such letter he'd received since the incident at the economic conference with Mosley's Blackshirts.

“What is it, Rowly?” Milton asked.

Rowland handed him the page. The poet read silently. His jaw hardened and he cursed quietly. “Just let them try,” he muttered. “Just let them try.”